Remission

Chris’ birthday is November 23 and it falls right smack on Thanksgiving Day this year. He used to love when that happened because Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday.

I am not sure how I feel about the approaching “anniversary season.” On some level, I have decided to have as happy a holiday season as I can because for three years, I have not been able to be happy.

I have spent Thanksgivings in shock from the diagnosis, terror-stricken from the fear of the inconceivable thought that Chris could die and crushed that the inconceivable came to pass. Someday I have to be able to enjoy the holiday season again, don’t I?

I haven’t really been sleeping lately. My body seems to know that the anniversaries are coming. There’s November 19, the day of Chris’ diagnosis; November 23, his birthday; December 25, the day I rushed him to Brigham and Womens Hospital because the pain in his side became too great for him to bear; January 1, the day he died and January 17, the day we met in 1999 and the day we married in 2004. There are so many dates.

I remember the orderly wheeling him away in a wheelchair on Christmas Day, 2004, as he said to me, “Don’t cry. We’re gonna take good care of him.” and I can remember the undertakers wheeling him away in a body bag on a two-wheeler. They looked evil to me. I know they didn’t have on dark glasses, but my memory tells me that they did. The brain is a very strange thing. He was gone, then. I knew his body was there, but he was gone even though I didn’t quite understand what that meant at the time. I figured he’d be back later. Actually, I didn’t figure anything. I was incapable of figuring.

I don’t know how to honor him on his birthday. Maybe the way to honor him is to have fun. Every step forward I have taken with absolute reluctance. I do it, anyway, all the while thinking “No.”

I dont’ want it to be.

I am just now beginning to be able to say the words, “My husband died from cancer.” and know that it’s true, that it really happened. It really happened to him and it really happened to me and I still just want to cry and cry and deny the truth. I would give anything to wake up and tell Chris that I just had the most horrible nightmare.

I laugh a lot. I'm happy most of the time. Even so, after everything that happened, anxiety is a state I will likely never conquer. I feel as though Chris' illness and death branded fear, anxiety and terror onto my soul forever.

Grief doesn’t end. It just goes in and out of remission.

-Shneed