One of the people on Walking with Jane’s board of directors asked me a good question Saturday night: “What have you done for you lately?”
Jane and I were both very bad at taking time for ourselves during the school year. Every summer, we took a week away from home where we could focus purely on us. It was the only way we could do it.
Since her death, my focus has been on this cancer. While she was sick, I worked to keep her mood and her mind positive. I bottled up the anger and the pain and focused that energy on looking for answers and helping her get through every day. I could not afford to get angry or lose control of my emotions in negative ways around her.
After her death, I had two priorities: finish my teaching career as strongly as I could–our students deserved that–and begin figuring out what I could do to prevent others from going through what Jane went through the last month of her life.
But a third priority soon made its presence known: we had both underestimated the emotional impact of her death on me. For weeks, I could not sleep more than a couple of hours a night. I found myself wandering the house aimlessly. I had great difficulty concentrating on grading papers. I had even greater difficulty controlling my temper. I found it hard to revisit places we had enjoyed together. There are television programs we were dedicated to I can no longer stomach. “House,” in particular, was impossible to watch.
I did–and still do–the things they say you should do. I take a walk nearly every day. I try to maintain regular habits in terms of sleeping, eating, and cleaning. I participated in grief groups both online and in the physical world. I recite a mantra similar to those in AA: one day at a time–sometimes one minute at a time.
And I think I am making progress. I read a novel last week. I went to several plays over the course of the winter. I watch a range of movies. Tonight, I went to an art show. I try to put myself in social situations–even though they make me hugely uncomfortable.
But the cancer still dominates much of what I do. Nearly every conversation ends up circling back to cancer. It is not always NET–sometimes it is breast cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, lung cancer–but most often it is. Every day brings me new knowledge about the disease. Much of the news is positive: we know far more now than we did 21 months ago. But even the positive news has some sting to it. I have learned too much about the politics of cancer and the impact it has had on NET research–and likely will continue to have.
June will be a difficult month to find time for myself in. Between now and June 23–the close of the greater Fall River Relay for Life–there is much to be done both for Walking with Jane and for the Relay.
But my friend is right: I need to find time for me.
