Vacation Daze

We are home from Pittsburgh. The ‘Burgh is my home town and this was John’s first visit so I felt some pressure to have the City of Champions make a good first impression. And it did.

That’s the pleasure of going home as an adult and as a tourist—I know what I wanted to show off so we stayed on the waterfront downtown and visited the The Scaife Mellon Art Museum and the Carnegie History Museum (my refuge as a kid) and we ate very, very well. We took the incline for dinners up on Mount Washington and the trolley to breakfasts down in the Strip Yards. And the best part for both of us was watching the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Miami Marlins at PNC Park. Beat ‘em Bucs!

So many memories. Most of them good. But I also found myself narrating my caregiving history as we traveled around Pittsburgh: “This is the hospital where my mother was first admitted; this is where I brought her after her stroke; this is where she lived in her coma; this is the hospital where Larry was finally diagnosed; this is the hospital where I brought Larry every week; this is the hospital where he died.”

And there were other things that I did not say to John but that came back to me in such vivid memory: the route from the airport when I came every other weekend to take care of Sig and then Larry; the restaurant where he fell down and couldn’t get back up and my ache for him over his humiliation; where I shopped on what turned out to be the day of his last hospital admission; the hotel in Oakland where I stayed all those nights so that I could walk to the University Medical Center.

e.e. cummings say that our lives are measured in tea spoons but I measure mine in hospital visits and loved ones cared for.

It was fun to be in Pittsburgh as a tourist and not a caregiver—to reclaim my hometown as an arts rich, sports fanatic metropolis. To perhaps balance the other memories by making summer vacation memories there with John.

Flashback Backlash

That’s what it felt like last night.

After yesterday’s visit to the oncologist with John for a quarterly check-up a wave of grief, anger, hurt and fear hit me hard. No sleep last night just wide awake nightmares and scenarios of chemo-days and the loneliness of those two years flooding thru me.

Being at the chemo center was the trigger. It felt like a huge delayed reaction. Maybe it hits now because I am safe enough now and we are safe enough now and the cancer crisis is far enough away now so I can fully absorb how painful it was then. And it was so painful then.

Here’s what I understand: the body can only do so much and hold so much pain. Then it gets shoved way down. To spring up later. Kind of like caregiver PTSD. I made my pain worse in those two years of John’s diagnosis, surgery, chemo and post-chemo exhaustion and recovery from awful side effects. I didn’t want to admit the fear and the loneliness—especially the loneliness. I was afraid to say—back then—how hard it was because I was afraid that someone would think I wasn’t loving enough or a good enough girlfriend. I really believed that I needed to be that uncomplaining, sacrificing caregiver.

All the advice I give so freely now: use your support group; complain like mad; speak up; find two people who can hear all of your real feelings—I learned the hard way. Maybe that is why my passion for cancer caregiving is so strong.

But even two years later as we still live in Cancer Land I’m having to release so much pain.

Valentine's Day

Oh readers you know that I have struggled—with cancer, kids, jealousy, fears, projections, and a fabulous habit of scaring myself to death over and over. Today I am basking in –and saying this so that I remember—we have a good marriage. My own little mind would undo that fact at the drop of a hat—or an email or a bill or a poor night’s sleep. But yesterday—Valentine’s Day—I got it.

Nothing fancy, nothing shiny—just a quick after work date with John—visiting the pastry shop where we met for years as friends who liked to talk about books and music. Yesterday we talked about the craziness and the courage of the past five years—and the pain we caused others and each other as our friendship became romance became commitment. Memories of sweet moments? Yes. Regrets? Yes. The grief and the gifts that cancer has given us? Absolutely yes.