I haven’t written for awhile, because I’ve been
conflicted. Each time I set pen to paper
(or fingers to iMac), I realize that I can’t talk about Life With Sophia
without talking about the turn that our life has taken.
I’ve been waffling, as I always do, about how much to
share. How much of the story I would be
telling is my story, and how much of it is someone else’s story. To what extent do I want to make the private public. But the effects of not writing about it are
inhibitory. The reticence spreading like
the very disease that has entered our lives.
That’s how it is when you make something taboo. If you don’t talk about something, you find
that you have to talk around it, and everything you say feels like a
half-truth.
Part of me hopes that if I do talk about it, I will draw the
support to me that I need and, maybe I’ll say something of value along the way that
will be helpful to someone else.
I don’t mean to be so mysterious. My father has been diagnosed with metastatic
throat cancer. He is coming here to live
with us through the duration of his treatment and recovery…whatever that may
look like.
I have fears about what that may look like. Fears that visit me in the night.
Last night I had a dream.
I was trying to get Sophia ready to go to school and there was a strange
man in my house. He opened up my freezer
and took out a frozen sheet of naan, as if he had every right to do so, leaned
against our Formica countertop and chewed it, eyeing me.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” I
told the man. “I’m taking Sophie to
school, and I have to lock up the house.”
He ignored me, went on chewing, and said, “Don’t you love
Barq’s root beer?”
“Uh, I do like root beer, but like I said, I really have to
get going. Could you please go?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” the man replied menacingly. I began to feel anxious—the pressure of
needing to get Sophie to school on time, to get to work on time, and not
knowing what to do about this uninvited guest.
“I have to lock the door behind you,” I insisted, standing
next to the door, trying to reason with him.
He pressed a code into a pad on the door—something I had not noticed
before—and replied, “I’ll lock up behind you. I know the code. “
“I don’t want to have to call someone,” I threatened vaguely
and hoisted my bag higher onto my shoulder.
He moved in close to me.
I could smell his breath, which was boozy. He kissed me lightly on the lips, and, still
close, whispered, “You’re not going to call anyone.”
Then I woke up, still frightened. It had all felt so…intrusive. I felt helpless. It wasn’t until I was sharing the dream with
Kevin as I prepared breakfast that it occurred to me: the intruder was Cancer.
And that’s how it feels.
Insidious. By the time you
discover it in your house, it has already established residency. Made itself at home. Spread out.
Taking. Locking itself in. Refusing to depart. Cancer doesn’t care if you have other things
to do, places to be. It demands your
attention.
My father’s cancer is incurable. In a week, they will begin to try to attack
it with chemotherapy. Cisplatin. A heavy metal and a cellular poison—as deadly
to healthy kidney cells as it is to cancerous cells. But even this “big hammer,” one of the
original cancer drugs that still works better than anything else they’ve got
for throat cancer, will not eradicate every mutant cell from his body. It will shrink the tumors, hold them at bay
for sometime, minimize symptoms—difficulty swallowing, breathing,
speaking—extend his life. But all it
takes is one microscopic cell, dividing over and over again, because that’s
what cancer cells are—a mutation of the DNA in a healthy cell that creates the uncontrollable
division of cells in the body—to form new tumors.
I wonder if it feels like a betrayal of his body. I watch my father struggle to understand what
is happening to him—not just the medical realities, but the metaphysical
whys.
It is hard not to look at the hourglass and spend one’s days
exclaiming, “My sand is running out! My
sand is running out!” What a thing to
suddenly realize that your life is finite.
My father, who is seventy, had assumed more time. I had assumed more time. There always seems to be more time. So we fritter, and we worry, and we
fight.
I am scared. I don’t
know how to do this. I don’t know what
to tell Sophia as my father grows more deeply ill. I worry that our attachments will deepen, and
then I will lose him.
