The walk I’m supposed to be doing

I’m supposed to be retired. I’m supposed to be sitting on my deck, looking out over my finely manicured landscape design. I’m supposed to be relaxing and traveling to exotic spots. I’m supposed to be doing all of those things with Jane by my side.

…I know I have to try.

Five years ago this fall, all of that changed. Jane was diagnosed over the summer with NET cancer. In early September, we learned it had damaged the valves in her heart. In late September, we knew we were in a race between her cancer and her heart–a race we needed to win if we were to enjoy even a few months of retirement together.

The cost of failure

By Christmas, it was over–and I was alone. Sometimes, I try to explain what that means to people who have not experienced it. People tell me I am good with words–and maybe I am. But I have not yet found anything that even begins to convey the emptiness that loss creates. My father’s words come closest: “And now you know there is nothing anyone can say to you that will make this feel any better.”

…with Jane by my side.

Someone told me last week that if we had even one child, this would be easier to bear. My father had six of us when my mother died. I don’t think it helped much, even when his eldest son was equally a widower. The relationship between spouses is different from what exists between brothers or sisters or children or parents. Our spouse is the person we choose to be our family. It is the only family relationship we make a conscious choice to have.

Why keep going?

Someone else asked me this week why I take on so much–why I can’t just let this be someone else’s problem. And I have to admit there are moments I just want to walk away from all of it. Nothing I do will bring Jane back. Nothing I do will truly avenge her death. Nothing I do will make this emptiness I feel any better.

…I was alone.

But then I think of the people who walk today because, in part, of what we learned from Jane. I think of the doctors and nurses and researchers Jane’s life–and final days–inspired. I think of the literally hundreds of people I know who are fighting the same cancer Jane had.

I walk because I know…

And I think of their children and their husbands and wives and parents. I know how it feels to look across the kitchen table and see no one there, what it’s like to wake up in the night to half the bed being empty, what it’s like to see something and have no one to share it with–and I know I would condemn no one to those things.

Nothing I do will bring Jane back.

Jane’s death set me on this path–but it is not what keeps me there. Jillian and Andrew and Amanda and Ronnie and their spouses and children do. Pamela and Kelly and Josh and Alicia and all their loved ones do. And Jen and Matt and Eric and Emily and George–and all the doctors and researchers working on this difficult cancer–do.

Choosing to ignore limitations

In the end, I know I won’t find the cure for NET cancer. I know I’m not rich enough or well-connected enough to come up with the money that will find that cure. But I also know that if I don’t do all that I can I won’t be able to live with myself.

I know how it feels…

I know how to write. I know how to speak. I know how to walk. Doing those three things, perhaps I can inspire the people who have the money; perhaps I can inspire the people who have the knowledge and the skills; perhaps that will be enough. And perhaps not. But I know I have to try.

You come, too.