Opening Jane’s suitcase

I said goodbye to another piece of Jane today. I went into the closet and took the suitcase she had packed for her hospital and rehab stays down from the shelf where it has lived since two days after I came home from the hospital without her. I took out the bag that held the clothes she had put on fresh the morning we went up for her heart surgery, as well. It resided next to the other bag.

Maybe it is just as well…

It will seem strange to many people who I have not unpacked those bags before now. If you’ve lost your husband or your wife, you will understand how hard it is to close any chapter of your last days with the one you love. There is a finality to it that is hard to describe. My fingers still have an unaccustomed tremor in them and my eyes threaten to spill salt water everywhere in sudden spurts.

Moving memories

And yet, the actual event was pretty straight-forward. I unzipped the bag, took out the clothes she had planned to wear but never did, and stacked them on a small table. I found no hidden final notes or other surprises. I went to the kitchen, got a large plastic bag, and moved the neatly refolded clothing into it. I walked down to the car and placed the bag in the trunk. Tomorrow, I will take them to a local thrift store.

I said goodbye to another piece of Jane today.

Then I turned to what she had worn that day. I bagged those up, too, but no one will ever wear them again. I can’t bear the thought of it, somehow. They will go out with tomorrow’s trash. They’ll be burned or buried. It sounds heartless, I know. But I can’t keep them here anymore than I can hand them off to someone else. And local law says I can’t burn them myself.

A small surprise

I write that, and it seems silly. Part of me wants to rescue them from the trash, wash them, and put them with the other items for the thrift store. And part of me says otherwise. There’s no good reason I have to decide that this instant. But it felt right when I decided that.

…no one will ever wear them again.

I cleared off the rest of the shelf while I was in the business. The closet was one of Jane’s. She kept her craft supplies there and, I discovered, hid her Christmas and birthday presents for me there. There were two pairs of shorts there she must have planned to give me for my birthday that spring. I suppose I should wrap them so I’ll have something to open that morning.

Other discoveries

There was an unfinished sweater she’d been knitting at some point there as well. There is no pattern in the bag, and I don’t knit, in any event. I’m not sure what to do with that. I set the other crafting items aside–a jewelry making set I’d given her for Christmas the year before she died; a set of colored drawing markers she’d used to draw pictures of cells and plants; some other odds and ends I know are crafting tools but have no idea what they are or what they do.

I suppose I should wrap them…

I also discovered the folder with her medical records from her last summer. She had not, I think, opened them. They looked unread. I unsealed the envelope they were in and read every word. I wish I had done so before she went into the hospital. There is much I might well have done differently–much we might well have done differently–had we known.

The extent of the problem

The blood clot in her arm that landed her in the hospital the same day we got the biopsy results was a bigger issue than I knew. She also had clots in her lungs and her neck. Treatment of those clots was complicated by the state of her liver, since the drug normally used was harder to regulate in patients with liver cancer.

I set the other crafting items aside…

The extent of her cancer was far greater than either of us knew. Not only were there tumors in her liver, but in her pelvis, and ileum. One of her kidneys was also deformed, though whether by the invasion of the cancer or by the swelling of the liver, the reports do not make clear. There may also have been tumors in her lungs and one of her adrenal glands–though the person reading the scans admitted they were not sure.

Hidden truths

Maybe she knew all of this and didn’t tell me. I know she told our neighbors who were headed to Florida in mid-October that she did not expect to see them again. I know she told other friends that she worried how I would cope with her gone. Sometimes I think she went out of her way to try to protect me from what was really going on.

The extent of her cancer was far greater…

And, of course, I was trying to keep her spirits up by being as positive as possible all the time despite my own understanding of her condition. My mind knew the odds were not good–but my heart could never let her see my concerns. Sometimes, a positive attitude is more important than all the drugs and surgery. Maybe we were both living a lie to protect the other from the reality we both knew was there. And maybe I actually read the reports and promptly suppressed them because I couldn’t deal with their reality.

Weighing what I might have done

But had I read the full reports on her scans, I might have let her go when the first coma hit. It would, perhaps, have been kinder for us both. But then I think about everything the researchers learned from her case in the weeks that followed–things that changed the way other patients were treated. And I think of the people we influenced simply by how we interacted with each other in those final days.

…I was trying to keep her spirits up…

Maybe it is just as well that I didn’t read any of what I read today before now. The smallest rock dropped in a pool has effects we cannot begin to see beforehand. Sometimes, ignorance is, perhaps, a good thing.

(Editor’s Note: I had vast plans for revising this website over the last six weeks. In mid-January, things went entirely sideways. I have not felt so lost since the weeks just after Jane’s death. I stopped writing, I stopped thinking, I stopped doing much beyond getting out of bed in the morning–and sometimes even that seemed very much in doubt. I think–though I am not sure–that I am finally, truly, in mourning. I’m feeling emotions again. I actually had a spontaneous–and unforced–laugh the other night that bubbled up out of my soul in a way I have not felt in a long time. It hurts like hell, but it is ever so much better than the terminal numbness I have endured for well over five years. It is nice to be able to have an uncontrolled cry that doesn’t feel like my sanity will vanish along with it on a permanent basis.

(I am told that really bad injuries don’t hurt. When the pain is so bad you think you are dying, it is a good thing because your body isn’t shutting down. The return of pain is also supposed to be a good thing. If that be the case, I am much better than I have been in a long time. I am nowhere close to healed–I may never be fully healed–but I think I’m a bit better than I was. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.)