NET Cancer is not the only kind of cancer. I know that, though reading the vast majority of what I write one could come a way with the impression that I don’t. In the last few weeks I have had two former students who have, since they graduated, become good friends, lose people close to them to cancer.
There are no simple, clean, painless deaths from cancer. Each has its pattern of slow annihilation. And each leaves the loved ones who go on with emotional scarring that changes everything.
The Question
Tonight I went to a wake for the second student’s father-in-law. The newly widowed woman asked me a question I never know quite how to answer: “Does it get better?” Three days short of the 20 month anniversary of Jane’s death I was in an even worse position than usual to answer that question. The familiar build-up to the tsunami that lands on me once a month has already begun.
I gave her the best answer I could: “It gets different–and in that sense it does get better–but at 20 months in, the ache is still there. It is a long process.” I offered the best solace I know how and told her daughter-in-law to have her call me if she needs to talk. But I find it hard to lie about grief, even a little.
The Real Answer
My next-door neighbor lost her husband more than a dozen years ago. After Jane died she took the time to talk to me. She did not sugarcoat any of it.
“People tell me I have gotten over it,” she said. “I nod my head. I smile. I tell them what they want to hear. But the truth is, it still hurts as badly as it ever did. I still cry. But no one sees it. The hurt is different. But it is still there, still awful.”
I’d like to tell you she is the exception. The truth is otherwise in most cases. Oh, there are some who seem to get over it and move on. But for the majority it seems the appearance of normalcy is an act. Among ourselves we can share the reality the world does not want to hear: The pain changes form; the pain changes in intensity now and again; you learn, slowly, to live with it and bury it in public so you can do what needs doing–but it is a constant companion that does not seem to truly diminish.
Consolation
When someone dies a particularly painful death we try to console their mates with phrases like, “She is out of pain now” and “He is in a better place.” And that is so. What we do not understand is that for the spouse left behind the pain is really only beginning–even though they have been through the awesome pain of watching their other half fight through the illness that finally claimed them.
Though I am not Christian in the dogmatic sense, the Bible says it well in describing a married couple as one flesh. The death of one half rends the other crippled and in great and seemingly unending pain. It is as though someone had sliced you in half and you had survived the operation. And the tighter the bond between the couple, the greater the pain of that separation is.
I have lost my grandparents–all of them when I was old enough to understand their deaths. I have lost my mother and my mother-in-law–who was like a second mother to me. I have lost friends. None of those losses measures even a tiny fraction of the loss of my wife.
Personal Reality
I am writing this tonight on our back porch. There is a gentle breeze dissolving the heat of the day. The hummingbirds have flitted in and out, sucking nectar from the flowers that line the deck and sugar-water from the feeder. They have serenaded me and hovered so close that I could have reached out and touched them. It is amazingly beautiful and peaceful–and sadder than I can say.
It is the kind of thing that Jane and I looked forward to every summer–the kind of thing we were looking forward to even more when we were retired–the idea of time and space together unencumbered by any kind of future responsibility. I want to reach out and hold her hand, pull her close to me and feel her head resting against mine and mine against hers.
Her cancer took that from us. It took it from the widow I met tonight and the widower I met two weeks ago.
It takes it from someone every day.
Marathon Walk Update
We have had two solid days of fundraising for The Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk so far this week and are closing in on the week’s goal of $1100. I am hoping we will hit $10,000 before the September 9 walk. All money raised by our team will go to research and education about NET Cancer.
You can now follow Walking with Jane on Twitter as well as Facebook. The latest news often gets posted there before I can write it for here.
