The trauma I experienced alongside Chris’ was the most horrifying and caused me to feel the most crushing sadness and panic I have ever felt in my entire life. Last night, I dreamed about that crushing sadness and panic.
Chris and I were at a family gathering at either a house or a hotel which was right on the beach. He didn’t look good. He was very thin and his eyes were very sad and sunken in. He was sweating. I noticed these things in the dream but, just as in real life when were actually coping with his cancer, I was too afraid to ask him how he felt. Again, as in real life, it was as though saying any of it out loud is what would make it real.
Part way through this dream-party, Chris looked at me with those sad, hollow, beaten eyes and told me he needed to go to the hospital. He told me he was dizzy. My heart filled with panic because “dizzy” was one of the words that meant that his cancer had come back.
November 19th, 2003, feels like a lifetime ago. Chris and I sat in the examination room, he on the table and I on a chair. The doctor asked him a list of questions: “Are you tired? Are you dizzy? Have you had any shortness of breath? Have you felt any pain? Have you been sweating?” Chris’ answer to every single question was “No.”
How blissful it was back in the days of my naivety. Although I didn’t know it at the time, naivety was a wonderful, worry-free party. Because he hadn’t experienced any of the symptoms the doctor mentioned, I became certain that Chris did not have cancer. What a fool I was.
Right before diagnosis #2, Chris was tired, dizzy, short of breath, in pain and sweating and this time I also thought it was not cancer.
Maybe it has always been wishful thinking on my part.
Chris knew this time. I know he knew. He was keeping it from me and Bonnie and I believe he was frightened. By the time they told us they were sending him home “to die” which is not the way they put it, I think he wanted to die rather than deal with the out-of-control, chemo-infected chaos his life had become. I’d want to die, too, if I was the star of that macabre drama.
Why do we hold onto life the way we do? What causes a person to willingly subject him/herself to hours and hours and days and months and years of poisonous injections when there is no guarantee that life will prevail? Love would be my reason. I love many people unconditionally and I would subject myself to a lot of pain if I thought there was even a sliver of a chance that I could stay with them a while longer. Chris did that for all of us and for himself.
In this uncertain, ever-changing, enigmatic world we live in, what the hell else ever matters besides love?
Shneed
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