Day 103

Over the last 5 weeks my thoughts have been preoccupied with various answers to a single question: What if Bill dies? My initial reaction was panic. I imagined living in our house alone, going to the co-op alone, watching television in the evening alone. It seemed unbearable. I thought about how sad and empty my life would be without his strange sense of humor and his enveloping embrace. Yesterday I met a friend for tea. Sitting in the coffee shop waiting for her to arrive I started to imagine a solo life. Would I spend my time in coffee shops, at the library, at church? Would I make new friends, take car trips, write more? Bill decided to go to bed early last night. Instead of watching television, I made banana bread and listen to NPR. I was starting to see the opportunity that the solo life might present. I have heard it said that when two people become one, you end up with two half people. I am afraid that, in many ways, that is what has happened to me and Bill. I love the time we spend together. However, I now realize that it has become unnecessarily exclusive. This morning I was reading Mary Karr's memoir Lit. She refers to her budding alcohol addiction this way: Maybe it fostered in me a creeping ambition-deficit disorder, but it could ease an ache. So anything worth doing could be undertaken later. Paint the apartment, write a book, quit booze, sure: tomorrow....Which ensures that life gets lived in miniature. Bill's cancer might just be a wake up call, an opportunity to transform our relationship once again, to move from a miniature life characterized by ambition-deficit disorder to something yet to be imagined.