Thursday Morning

Recess:

J:"I got my PET scan results yesterday. My tumors have grown like they're on steroids. Where there used to be three there are now six, and they have doubled in size. They're growing fast."

C:"No." (Oh, Lord, why can't I be eloquent?) "Did you start that new chemo yesterday? Do they think that will help?"

J:"This new chemo works only if you have time on your side. It takes months to be effective. They're probably not going to go through with the whole treatment. My tumors are growing too fast."

C:"What did they tell you to do?"

J:"They told me to quit working. I told them they better have some damn good reason because that isn't going to happen unless I literally can't get out of bed."

C: "Why do they want you to quit?"

J: "To sit at home and think about my cancer."

C: "No no no."

J: "Can you believe my fucking husband is going to outlive me?"


WHAT!???? I thought you loved your husband. Oh, right. You were separated for over a year. Yep, he's the nicest person on the planet but he has his nebish-like qualities. Marvin Milktoast sometimes, but a nice guy. Kind of a kid with financial matters and he doesn't clean up after himself but he balances you out. You both have had affairs but I thought you had worked it out after the separation.

Oh, sheesh, what do I know? I know you just told me you have been given a death sentence yet I can't absorb this news. I am doing that denial thing I do. I cannot accept this news. You are walking. You are talking. You are working. You are dying. It doesn't make sense to me and I don't know how to store this information. And I most definitely can't make a mental picture of what is going to happen to you. You and I. You and I ----- we've had this really strange and rare friendship that started as pure disgust on my part. You were the person who would greet me with a hug and then tell me I was an airhead. You were the one who would chew me out in the lounge but would write me a letter telling me how unprofessional I was the time I was upset you lined my kids up long before lunch playtime was over. You were the one who made me feel like there were always two ways to do things: your way and the wrong way. We didn't get along for the first 13 years we knew each other. Then you had marriage problems followed immediately by cancer, and suddenly you softened. You gained a capacity to understand human frailty and why people stay in imperfect relationships. You relaxed. You started accepting the rest of us. You reached out; I responded. Our friendship grew, and I started to love your presence in my life. We accepted each other's ways and collaborated on a lot of work, especially for our summer school program and our grade level. You are the organized one; I am the creative one. Now you have told me you are dying, and I can't accept it. There is a cognitive dissonance I don't understand, I can't absorb, I can't fathom. Yet you have told me that my life is, once again, on course for grief,and there is nothing I can do to derail it. The doctors give you less than six months to live. I look across the playground at your room and feel this strange impending doom. Please tell me it isn't true. Please tell me you're going to live. If you die, I'll never be able to look across that yard without sobbing. Please don't die. Please don't die.

The next day you turned 45. Was this your last birthday? Why is God going to take you and leave two motherless children? If I ever get a chance to talk with God, if He ever deigns to grant me an audience, I will ask him that very question. Why did you take Julie so soon and not Bill?