The Other Side of Anger

Someone very perceptive pointed out that I might be experiencing some anger. Hmmmm. Yep. Anger. Definitely. I make no apologies for being angry at this derailment of the love train. The fantasy has crashed and the reality was switched in the night while these two passengers were sleeping. Instead of planning where to live and the trips we’ll take and what retirement someday might be like, we are instead in love in the time of cancer.

When I sit still the other side of the anger is right there. That is all the love and desire and lust. There is still amazing sex which surprises both of us—we are in our fifties and not newcomers—there are many “Oh my God’s” the next morning. Is this a side effect of chemo no one talks about? Is this the psychological impact of cancer? Having death sitting right on the bedpost? As an artist I know that libido takes many forms and it is always insisting on life. We commonly think of libido in terms of sex but sex is also an insistence on life and on living.

There are the other things that sit along side this grand waiting game of cancer. There are the golf clubs I want to buy and the concerts we’d like to subscribe to, the trip to the beach we talk about for next summer. But everything has an “if” and “maybe” and “if we can” factor. Will we play golf or will I? Will we get to go to concerts if we buy a series of six?

I worry about how to plan my fall schedule. Do I take the fellowship I am offered? That means going away from home for weeks. Do I take a class and work toward the graduate degree I want to have for later? I say to myself and to my journal “Invest now in your later.” Sometimes that later means when his cancer is over and his life is busy again and you’ll want to not have lost your life. Sometimes that later means when I am alone because he has lost his.