The angst is the same each time I am here. There is no relief. The surgeries are each more serious than the last, and the prognosis less desirable, but I have become more accustomed to being in the liminal anticipation of seeing what they find and waiting for what they miss. So it feels the same.

It is a trauma, and human, to hold up our life as two pillars and then be chief witness to Paul’s trials and try to hold up the roof as he falters. The fractures it is causing in me are deep and fine. None of us will be the same after this. I am asking whomever is in charge of these things for long periods of peace and a couple handfuls of joy. I toggle between anger, fear, and sadness for my children, my husband, his natal family, and myself.

I assume life will be hard. I am not surprised by this, just unwilling to take this path at this time, and a little heartbroken. I have lived with death in my periphery for decades. Some label me a pessimist; I call myself a realist.  It motivates me to not waste a day. When Paul proposed to me in my dorm room, I said “Yes.” The very next thought in my head was, “And one day, one of us will leave the other.” The best love songs are the ones that nod to our temporality. Therein lies the aching poetry- that love can be too big for the lives that hold it.

Cancer is an accelerant, consuming the small kindling, catching any fray in the sheathing and turning everything into a conflagration, while you stand surrounded and bewildered, holding one bucket of water.

It strips you of pretense and identities and leaves nothing but your values and the deepest stories you have told yourself (many of which will turn out to be at least a little false) It will change everything, and I mean everything. It took the marriage I thought I had almost immediately, leaving me unmoored, isolated and bereft of my person, even as he sat across the table from me, even as I cared for him and was scared for all of us.

I am the person without the tumors, but my health is different. I am gaining weight while eating less, I have hives and headaches regularly, I don’t sleep or digest well, my memory is shot, I am grayer and I cry with a frequency that is very new to me. It has strained my children and their worlds, especially the youngest, who still lives at home without the buffer of her older siblings.

And yet…

And yet, 9 months into this nightmare that no one would believe if they knew the whole story, we have learned things, good things, things we will carry forward for the rest of our lives. I am grateful for them, even as I beg to not be given any more wisdom.

But that is enough for today. They wheeled him away from me at 7:30am and it is now 5pm and I have not laid eyes on him.