grief

Stage 4


When cancer has metastasized to sites beyond its origin, they call it “stage 4”. In my dad’s case that means that the tumor in his lungs has either grown into the heart muscle or aorta or that the size of it and the effusion it has caused warrant the dire level.

In any case, he is 81 years old and already suffering from pulmonary disease and severe osteoporosis. He would not survive cancer treatment. They are discharging him from the hospital tonight.

When I talked to my mother, the lung specialist had just left, and the nurses were getting Dad ready for discharge. They don’t waste time. Mom sounded very matter of fact. I remember that tone. I used that tone a lot myself. I still use that tone when I talk about Will’s illness or death. I have cultivated it and it can be a very useful barrier.

I have tried to remember what it felt like that day, the one nearly five years ago now, when the doctors gathered in that tiny exam room just off the lobby of the neurology waiting area in Iowa City and told me that Will was going to die.

Only that is not what they tell you.

They give you the name of the disease. They tell you that it has no treatment. They tell you that things will progress. Sometimes they have a time-line. Mostly they try to exit the room as soon as they can.

The day they told me that my husband was going to die, my Dad was in the waiting area watching BabyD, who was truly a baby then – just fifteen months old. I was too angry to cry. Angry with the doctors for not knowing more about what was wrong so they could answer my questions. Angry with Will for hiding so many of the early symptoms of his illness from me. Angry that I was alone and too grown up to just throw us all in Dad’s car and go home with him.

And my Dad said nothing. He didn’t chastise me for my reaction that day. He didn’t judge me like so many people would in the care-giving and widow years to come. He just helped me get Will and BabyD to the next waiting room for more tests and then to the parking lot and our vehicles for the trip back to our house in Des Moines that would never be our home.

Aside from my Auntie, Dad probably was the most consistent supporter I had during that time.

I asked Mom how he was doing, but I could hear him joking with the nurses in the background. He is quite the flirt when he is in the hospital.

I wonder what it feels like to be told you are dying when you were dying already. It’s like double-secret probation in a way.

Later when I talked with Rob, I told him that I feel worse knowing he has cancer and is dying then I did knowing he was just dying of the pulmonary fibrosis. And it doesn’t make sense because we all knew he didn’t have much time left anyway.

The doctors say a year or less which is nonsense. Even Mom saw through that evasion. And the doctor balked at hospice. What is it with doctors and hospice? Why do they wait so long?

I called my Auntie. I left a message for CB. DNOS called me, and we talked a bit. Mom told me not to come yet, but I think she is still in shock. DNOS agreed and is going to use her professional connections to get the real scoop on Dad’s condition. It pays to have a social butterfly sister who used to work at the hospital lab.

I asked her how she was.

She said, “Fine.”

But she choked on it a bit and when I asked again, she told me she would call me later after she knew more.

DNOS would have made a pretty good NOS.

No More Hump Day Hmming for a While


The muse of hmming, Julie, is recovering and regrouping after Ike and so it may be some time before I inflict introduce another Hump Day Hmm for consideration. However, it has been a day or two since I put up a fresh blog piece and my life has not been that static, so I have decided to provide a bit of an update.

I am still working on the short story known as Kumari. It has garnered 4 reviews on the critiquing site and although not a single one of them had any idea what the story was really about (my bad totally, I know, and I am working on clarification), I did get some advice that was useful and have employed it to the betterment of the story.

The main complaint I received about Kumari is that the character isn’t likable. Not even a little bit. And hurray! That is what I wanted them to think but apparently the main character has to be likable or at least redeemable in order for the reader to want to read at all. I discussed it with my writing group last night and was reminded that I am the author and I need to stay true to my character. She is not likable but how could she be? She was raised to be indifferent and callous. Further, the point of the story is to do more than entertain but to make a reader think.

Thinking is asking a lot of readers these days. We are a society that expects to be entertained as passively as possible. No deep thoughts allowed. But I don’t think that sci-fi/fantasy should be mindless. It is a genre that was meant to allow authors to explore bigger issues and moral questions. 

So I am focusing on clarifying and beefing up existing content and we’ll see what happens next. One reviewer thought there was potential for a very dark story. Perhaps this is my Apex submission after all, eh?

Speaking of Apex, they are having their annual Halloween flash fiction contest and I am entering. The theme is “election horror” and I have a nice little piece that I tried out on the writing group last night which they liked. Of course, they are Canadians and it isn’t hard for anyone native to here to imagine the U.S. as a den of evil and conspiracy.

I have also been occupied with monitoring the condition of the family down south these last two weeks. And if we had a color code system we would be orange-ish.

CB had another mini-meltdown and I spent numerous hours on the phone trying to talk him off the paranoia ledges he sometimes talks himself up onto. He apparently spent a few days harassing our folks to the point that Dad had a breathing episode and Mom was in tears. I think I may have put a spot to that for the time being.

DNOS has informed me that when Dad dies, CB and Mom are my responsibility. She will handle the arrangements and BabySis. In other words she will take the easy stuff and I will be left to deal with crazy and exploding. It’s a good thing I used to teach public school. That was a typical day for me once.

That was a while ago and Dad has failed quite a bit even since we last saw him in June. He can barely exert himself physically without bringing on severe shortness of breath due to the demands movement place on his body. 

And I can hear the disinterest in life now in his voice. He told DNOS recently that he is “tired of making decisions”. 

My Dad, the ultimate Virgo, is tired of being the boss? That is so not good.

Rob has asked if I need to go down there now. I am playing a wait and see on a daily basis. If you had asked me even last year if I wanted to be there for the end, I would have said no – thank you  – but no. Deathbed vigils are hellish in an out of body experience way. The days or weeks leading up are torture because it seems like every fiber of your being is on red alert with sirens blaring.

But now, I feel a bit differently. Mom and DNOS are ostriches. They will not see or ask or do unless someone points it out to them. The truth is that I am the only one in my family who morphs into Action Girl when it is crunch time. I was born with the crisis management gene. I might fall apart but not in the middle and not when it counts. I always come through when it counts.

Now here is the kicker, the evil selfish daughter in me doesn’t want to put my life on hold to go down. I have things falling into routine now. I am starting my first writing course at University in two weeks. I just got elected to the board of directors of one of my writing groups. I am auditioning for another contributing writer gig at a women’s group blog I read. I have a couple of firm writing deadlines coming up – one for a workshop with real publishers who are reading and giving mini-interviews and critiques.

It’s not a convenient time for my Dad to decide to die in other words.

I am such an awful person for even thinking it, let alone writing it down. But my Dad would get it. When he was traveling back and forth from Des Moines every week to help me take care of my late husband, he confided to me that he would help as long as he was needed but he felt he was missing out on his life and the things that were important to him as a person. Not dad or a father in law. A person.

I talked with Dad this morning. It was the kind of distracted conversation I used to have with my late husband when the dementia was starting to set in for real. The voice was weak and breathy and gurgled with phlegm. My late husband finally succumbed to pneumonia. There are more painful ways to die but suffocating has to be one of the most terrifying and I am speaking from my experience watching my late husband and from my own dealings with asthma.

Once you’ve watched someone die, you can’t undo it. Erase the images. Ignore the truth. Pretend that it isn’t coming and there are things that need to be done in advance.

I took a long walk today. About 4 miles down and back from J-berg to the gymkana fields. No one was burning trash or leaves today and I didn’t encounter dogs. I have come to the sad conclusion that I can no longer run. Having just recovered from a painful bout of achilles tendonitis in both ankles, I just can’t risk damage. Power walking with the occasional jog and yoga it is. I don’t experience the same sense of freedom though and I will miss that.

And that’s all folks.

Dan in Real Life: Our Friday Night Movie Pick


As many of you know, Rob and I frequently cuddle up in bed with his laptop and a DVD from our public library. The library has quite an impressive collection. We have seldom been unable to find a film that strikes our fancy and often we choose movies from the sneak peaks that are provided on the DVD’s we have seen.

Dan in Real Life though was something I read about on MSN. We are Steve Carell fans and investigate his movies even if we don’t end up checking them out of the library.

I warned Rob upfront that it was a chick flick and he lamented the fact that all the really funny actors eventually succumb to the dreaded genre. It wasn’t until he was firing up the computer and inserting the disc that I mentioned the storyline was that of a widower falling in love again.

“Just had to keep the streak alive, didn’t you?” was his arched eyebrow comment*.

The main character Dan, played by Carell, is an advice columnist on the verge of syndication and raising his three daughters somewhere in Jersey. During a trip to his family’s summer home for their annual get together, he meets a woman by chance in a bookstore and they click. However the woman turns out to be his brother’s new girlfriend. Romantic comedy ensues.

The supporting cast is great**. The subplots are humorous but realistic. Dan’s widowhood is central to the story, not in a “in your face way”, but merely as just another circumstance of his life that makes him who he is and explains the way he deals with many of the issues that come up.

And it made us laugh. Both of us. Despite the mediocre reviews the film got when it came out, it is worth a viewing in the privacy of one’s living room, den or bedroom – as is our wont mostly because of the lack of living room furniture thing.

Being widowed, I was especially touched by the tiny details. For example, the opening scene is early in the morning with the alarm going off. Dan reaches out to the empty side of the bed and you can see he is clearly lonely. The camera pulls back to reveal that his late wife’s side of the bed is made and covered with papers and books and whatnot. Another scene at his parent’s home finds Dan being set up for the stay in the laundry room. Rob thought that was funny until I pointed out that naturally he wouldn’t get a real bedroom like his married siblings. It’s not as if he had a wife to consider. And of course there is the constant but well-meaning advice of his parents and siblings to “get back out there already”***.

Of course movie nights mean being tired the next day. We always end up staying up way too late regardless of how early we get started. Isn’t that the way of “dates”?

Dan in Real Life is a good flick. You should give it a look if the opportunity presents.

*Anyone who has been reading here a while knows that Rob and I have a habit of picking/watching movies with death and widowhood themes even when we try not to pick them out.

**The brother is played by Dane Cook who is a comedian Rob often hears on XM and had been on that very day with a bit about his first blow-job and and car door handles. It’s here on YouTube.

***There is a great subplot with one of his teen daughters falling in love that is the perfect metaphor for the newly minted adult single back “out there”. The compare/contrast is great.