Day 102

I few years ago, I ran across an obscure reference to a book titled Grav dar du star (Dig Where you Stand) by Sven Lindqvist. The book launched a movement in Sweden in the 1970s. Workers and community members began recording the history of local places and spaces. It was an effort to reclaim history by those whose voices had been previously silenced. Dig where you stand: It is more than a title to me, it is simply good advice, particularly for writers. Whenever I find myself asking: What should I write about today? I often respond with these words. Dig where you stand. In other words: What is most alive for me right now? What thoughts and feelings need to be tended to? These are the things that call out for the page.

Day 101

Bill has become increasingly tired over the last few weeks; as a result, my chore list has grown to accommodate his chores, as well as my own. Last night I carefully sorted the recycling and hauled it to the curb. Today I got up and went to the grocery store. When I returned the recycling was scattered in my own yard and the yards of my neighbors. I looked like a crazy woman chasing newspaper and empty plastic bottles caught on the wind. I came home and in a state of utter frustration and anger, responded to an email from a friend. I explained how crappy my life is right now and how pissed off I am about it. I told her that I would never be able to write from this state. She wrote back with this question: What sort of thing would you like to read that would help? Clearly, she was advising me to write that, the thing I most needed to read myself. I knew immediately what I most wanted to hear from the page. I wanted an acknowledgement that indeed life really sucks sometimes. Bill told me a story once about a woman he encountered while working in a psychiatric hospital. She was depressed, suicidal perhaps, when she told him about all of her hardships and struggles. Bill was at a loss for words and simply said, "Wow, your life really sucks." These words were not from the counselors' handbook. Instead, they were honest and real and they conveyed understanding and empathy. Life really does suck sometimes. It is freeing to write these words: no more pretending, no more trying to prop myself up, no need to put on a happy face. I can sit in my discontent and know that as much as I don't like it, I will survive. Who knows, maybe tomorrow will suck just a little less than today.

Day 100

The poet Dean Young wrote: You start with a darkness to move through but sometimes the darkness moves through you. Occasionally, I feel this anger well up in me, in response to the Bill's cancer. Sometimes it is directed at Bill, sometimes it is directed at the blanket left in the living room after a nap, sometimes it is directed at the woman who sits behind the counter at the lab and chats with a friend while we sit waiting for yet another blood draw. It is almost never directed at the cancer. The cancer, after all, is deaf and indifferent. I suppose I am angry at my own powerlessness. I couldn't make my dad stop drinking, I couldn't heal the fractured mind of my first husband and I can't cure Bill's cancer. I am utterly powerless and it really pisses me off.

Day 99

Some days I can't even think of anything to have for dinner. How can I be expected to write?

Day 98

Up at 4:00 a.m., we had to be at the hospital by 5:45. With a 45 minute drive to get there, we didn't have much time to acclimate to the day. Just as well, Bill couldn't have coffee, or anything else to eat or drink. I surreptitiously sipped tea and ate a piece of banana bread while Bill sat staring into space. We were both nervous. The test today would reveal whether or not the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. So much hangs in the balance. The ride from Moscow to the hospital in Lewiston was tense. I am not used to driving in the dark. It makes me feel old and sad to realize that I am already become one of those people. Once at the hospital, we are ushered into a room where Bill is instructed to undress and given a paper gown to change into. Somehow in taking off his clothes, I fear that he is being stripped of his identity. He looks so vulnerable laying there in the narrow bed. Soon they will wheel the bed to an operating room where they will anesthetize him and do God knows what. Bill and I are both lost in fearful daydreams when Brenda comes into the room. She is a tiny woman with a generous smile, a shock of black curls and sparkling eyes. Her badge says: RN. She asks a series of medical questions, the same questions Bill has answered dozens of times in the last few weeks. The repetition can be tiring but Brenda's tone is conversational. She immediately puts us at ease. As she completes the routine medical tests, she asks about our lives and tells us about her love of gardening. We talk about the approach of springtime and our shared aversion to new technologies. Bill tells her the story of how the cancer was discovered and she says: "Wow, you've had a difficult month, haven't you?" No apologies, no platitudes, just empathetic understanding, pure and simple. I have heard it said that our problems always come bearing gifts. Brenda must be one of those gifts.

Day 97

Growing up, my home had all the hallmarks of instability: too young parents, poverty, alcoholism, depression. I longed for some bedrock upon which to build my life. More than anything I wanted to bring order to the chaos. Even as a child, I was neat and organized and diligent and hard working, at times obsessively so. By the time I was in my twenties, I had come to realize that while I could control my actions, I couldn't control the outcomes and I certainly couldn't control other people. I felt small and insignificant: helpless. I sought support from groups that met in church basements. Adult children, we called ourselves. Never was a name more apt. Around the same time, I started reading about the occult. My friend Donna and I would visit psychics when we could afford it. When we were broke, which was most of the time, we would bring out our own tarot cards and attempt to read the obscure messages of the Hanged Man or the High Priestess. We smiled at the future when the Lovers appeared and cringed in response to Death. We wanted so much to believe that the future was already written, that we could divine it and prepare ourselves. Somewhere along the way I stopped believing in prophecy or magic, but I never stopped longing for certainty and stability. One thing is certain about living with cancer: nothing is certain. The doctor says: Your cancer hasn't spread with a tone and inflection that suggests: well, probably not. A course of treatment is laid out only to be changed later. Office workers and nurses convey information that is changed at the will of doctors. Dates, locations, instructions, plans and protocol are all tentative. One has to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Ah great, another fucking growth opportunity.

Day 96

I woke up this morning and prayed for sleep to reclaim me. When it refused I reluctantly rolled out of bed. I didn't want to face the day. More to the point, I didn't want to face my feelings: the feelings of frustration and fear that starting welling up in me at the surgeon's office yesterday. I didn't want to hear his concerns about the prospects that perhaps the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes or invaded the chest cavity. These aren't just spare parts were talking about here. This cancer has claimed part of a person I love. I want to believe in the magic of medicine to make it all better but it is clear that the cancer is a mighty and mysterious adversary. I am afraid. Yesterday, I proclaimed my commitment to managing gracefully. I suspect that in order to live gracefully I can't allow my feelings to be in the driver's seat, nor can I lock them away in the trunk. I have to allow them to pass through. I have to feel them and recognize that they are nothing more than mind clouds.