Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The Pantomimed C

3-25-11

"You pantomimed a giant "C", rather than speak the word out loud in front of my kids.  Maybe you aren't ready for people to know about it yet, or maybe you just didn't want to scare them. 

I'm scared.  I wonder if you are. 
I wonder what will happen next.  If you will accept the treatment they offer.  If you will just let it happen.  Whatever your decision, I won't judge you for either, because honestly, I can't fathom what I would decide. 

I wonder if you miss him, and this is the universe, facilitating your way back to him. 
Of course you miss him. 

I can't help but feel such guilt for the way our relationship has changed.  It's dumb.  Because you're dying?  It doesn't change the fact that you were cruel.  It doesn't change anything, really.  And truly, you were dying all along.  We all are.  Now there is just a grotesque, malignant word pinned to it.   A foreboding word that promises imminent doom.  The pantomimed C. 


I hate it.  I hate the lump in my throat that the lumps in your belly are creating.  I hate the finality of it all, and the sickening sensation I feel tingling in my neck when I think about losing you.  I hate the friendly and tolerant way we have begun to accept one another, instead of the complete immersive love it seemed we always had before.  And now it seems you are another being completely, because of this foreign thing inside you.  It's taking you from me, and there is nothing I can do about it. 

The world was insanity when he left.  What will happen when you are gone?" 


I wrote this the day she told me.  Some things are more certain now.  And some things have larger question marks attached to them. 
I love her.  I fear greatly for her.  I feel sorrow over the great pain she's in a lot of the time.  Guilt for thinking "the universe put the cancer into the wrong belly..."  Oh yeah, I go there.  It's not pretty. 
Scathing hatred for the medical community, and my personal feelings about their "treatments." 
Back and forth between thinking she will live on forever like some sort of earthly goddess, and thinking "she will die within the next few months." 
I'm a spectrum. 

But I don't matter.  No amount of wishing will debilitate those tumors.  They are there.  Housed warm and safe where she once so lovingly cradled her babies.  Nurtured and warm.  And no amount of my fear and worry for her will cure her.  No amount of my fret will ease her pain. 
They are there. 

Whether we avoid the word, or not.  




2 comments:

  1. I don't know what else to say but I love you. And I'm sorry. It seems petty and awful in this context to commend you for writing beautifully, but you do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love you, back. And I never find you petty, or awful.

    ReplyDelete