It’s been a long five years, but I’m finally moving in clear water again.
Right from when we met in 2009, life with Jack was like a trip down the Niagara River. Sometimes we laughed loudly as we rushed through rapids; sometimes we tread water comfortably side-by-side in a deep pool; and sometimes we were thrust into the vortex of an eddy swirling so rapidly we thrashed about against the centrifugal force of the water and lashed out against each other. The common thread was we could never see the bottom. The experiences sometimes left me exhilarated but mostly anxious that we were going right over the Falls. I received no comfort from Jack who loved the very thing that freaked me out - the uncertainty. Indeed, he seemed happiest when he couldn’t anticipate what was coming next, and had lived his whole life like one of those barrel people from Niagara’s history. In contrast, for 43 years I’d controlled my own personal watercourse like a lock keeper on the Welland Canal. This new life was rich and thrilling in a way I’d never known!
When we received his lung cancer diagnosis late in 2015, the water of our relationship simultaneously slowed, thickened, and blackened like squid ink. Cancer water, you see, weighs you down like the Exxon Valdez spill. There were times it would become less viscous and a little clearer, as Jack’s chemo and radiation bought him some months of relative wellness. The uncertainty though of his future and therefore mine made the bottom shadowy at best. Jack maintained his cavalier approach: “why worry until there’s something to worry about?” was his mantra. Excellent words to live by but hard to conjure with my disposition.
Through early 2018, our marriage pool was increasingly black and thick. There was no known medical reason, but Jack felt unwell. We were crabby with each other as he threw all his energy into his work, just like Gord Downie* had a year earlier. Beyond work, Jack’s life was reduced to two activities: smoking and sleeping. I worked a lot too and when I wasn’t, I fretted or lay in bed with my back to him, tears silently soaking my pillow.
Five years ago this week, the waters got slightly less murky. I knew then and I know now that the news we received should not have made things easier for me. But it did. The source of his ill health and mood changes was the spread of cancer to his spinal fluid, a common secondary site for lung cancer and one for which there is no cure. A known unknown became a known known.**
My other known known was that I had just one thing to do - ensure his last days were as easy as possible. I took a leave of absence from work and began the most difficult ten weeks of my life. Today is not the time to relive that.***
Instead, today is the time to celebrate human resilience. We can swim in the darkest waters but with time, those waters become clear again. It’s gradual to be sure. But it happens, even when you think it can’t and even when there is a pandemic thrown in to beat you back down.
Now I paddle around in the calm pools of Chandlerville remembering the crazy trip I’ve taken to get here.
POSTSCRIPT: I wrote this week's piece a week ago. I felt on top of my game. I'd received two pieces of excellent news - that I'd been longlisted for the Amy Award (the contest started by Allison Wearing, the writer whose course I took in 2021 to kickstart this whole writing business) and also longlisted for the Women on Writing contest. I'd been to the Eden Mills Writers Festival last weekend and sat with other aspiring writers as great ones read from their books. Then late Friday I was hit with the first illness I've had since 2019 - brutal headache and sore throat - and the reality of what I was going through five years ago hit me. I’ve tested negative for covid this weekend but positive for grief, a reminder those calm pools will be subject to occasional ripples, forever, I suspect.
* Canadian music icon, Gord Downie, died in 2017 at 53 of brain cancer after a Canada-wide tour with his band, the Tragically Hip. I watched the televised concert in the basement of our house, with Jack sleeping beside me. I sobbed throughout, thinking only of Gord’s wife (whom I don’t know, to be clear) who was surely disappointed he chose to spend his time with his fans and not with her.
** In the language of Donald Rumsfeld.
*** You can read about the last days of Jack’s life in a series I wrote in 2021. Start 10 days before his death, and then four days, three days, two days, one day, and Nov 19, 2018, the day Jack died.
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