I’m crashing into this nexus, where I often feel I’ve said everything one possibly could about Colin and how I’m dealing with it, but still feel that I should write something every now and then … if for no other reason that it gives me an excuse to clean out the spam notes that pile up in my absence – there’s a pancake restaurant in Munich; and some people think I need a better web design (they have one for sale!); “very interesting, but nothing sensible,” reports Andrew Dep; there’s random comments in Cyrillic that, for all I know, are incredibly empathetic; and whoever runs the Chaturbate sex cam service – neither Colin nor I are interested in what you’re selling.
Also, I kind of left the ball hanging after I reported Christina was going into surgery. Apologies. The week after she got home was tiring, followed by a weekend of a sick dog and then, for good measure, a few days where I was laid low.
But we’re all better now. Christina got back from the hospital with no major incident. And a few days later, the biopsy results came back with no sign of cancer anywhere. Really, it feels like the only better option would have been not to have cancer in the first place. But it weighs on us. We know cancer can go badly. We know that getting rid of it once doesn’t mean we’re free of its shadow. We know, we know, we know. But we just keep going on. Healing from the surgery has taken some time: Christina’s arm was limited in its range of use for a long time afterwards. And now we’ve got to get ready for radiation (expected to start at the end of the month) and then see if she’s going to go away for rehab or not.
And it all keeps hitting you when you least expect it. You think your wife is doing great, and then she has a bad moment and you realize this is going to be with us for a while. You think you’re doing OK with Colin’s absence and then you find yourself walking behind a 5-year-old boy – it’s never the age he would be that gets me in the gut, but seeing someone the age he was in his last year – and I wonder how this kid is doing and, if he’s doing OK, why mine couldn’t be as well. It’s taking a weekend trip to Stralsund and bringing along some of your writing to work on during the train ride, only to realize that the folder you grabbed to hold your papers was one of his old medical folders, clearly labelled with his name and date of birth, and you can’t believe you didn’t know that or realized you had that and now you’re just using it for some stories you’re writing. But what are you supposed to do? Enshrine every little thing? It’s a folder. It’s supposed to hold papers.
But it was his folder.
Emma is getting confirmed in about six weeks. That means going to church from time to time. I was always the churchiest member of our little family. I went semi-regularly for a lot of my 20s and 30s. It kind of stopped when we had kids. Disappearing for 2-3 hours to get to the English-language services would have been an excellent mental break for me, but would have been kind of crummy for Christina. And German-language services just wash over me. So, I’ve gotten out of the habit. But Emma has to go from time to time and it seems a good idea for someone to accompany. And with Christina recovering from everything, it falls to me.
I really thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. But then some of the call and response prayers started, and they were about interdictions for sick people. And I started thinking about all the prayers I had performed down through the years and how those had all come to naught. And we were praying for some other people? All I could think of was standing up and saying “There are no guarantees, people.” But I’m aware enough to know that would go down badly.
But then I started thinking about what the church had or had not done for us during Colin’s illness and, I suppose, there’s no way the church would ever not come up short. But I still started getting mad about that.
I mean, you have to understand, I’ve never thought of God as a wish machine. But I’ve always had a certain respect for him because, well, he created everything in my world view. But if you start to think about how he gave us everything, then it sort of follows that he can also take everything (or at least not prevent it from being taken). And that takes you down some pretty dark paths. All I know is I never sat and prayed for this thing or that thing, because I knew it didn’t work that way. But this day, I found myself praying and actually getting angry with God. Like, God, I require answer. God, I think you owe it to me to make sense of this.
I was not raised to speak to God this way. It feels a little dangerous. Especially in church. Like, what a place to get smitten.
It also didn’t help that it also came back to me how much I detest most Christian music.
So, it was not a good church visit. And I left the church feeling way more distressed than I ever thought. Of course, there was a social afterwards and a few friends asked how I was doing. And it’s not like you can answer “Oh, I just had an existential crisis about my relationship with God and the way he failed to save my son,” but I didn’t have any good fibs prepared either. All I know is that, later, I went walking with Murphy and had my music in. “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles came up and I felt like I had a much more religious experience with that than anything that came out of church.
So, there are still some bumps in the road. But we’re working on it. Christina is going to go to chemo. Emma is going to get confirmed. Murphy is probably not going to learn to avoid eating gross things off the ground that wreck his digestive system. I’ll probably go to church again. I’m just going to have to brace myself a little better before I go. Then again, for about five years now, I’ve often been reminded how important it is to brace myself for things.
And it does get easier on some levels. A few weeks ago, a new colleague started and saw a picture from 2015 of all five of us. “You have three kids?” she asked. Without thinking, I said “Well two, the youngest is dead.” A few years ago I would have agonized about what that answer would have done to her. I don’t know if it’s better, but now I figure people just have to deal with the truth. And the truth is we’re all still coping and trying to survive and learning how to sit through Mass, even if it means Christian music and reminders of what could have been.
P.S. The photo is from his baptism. It seemed appropriate.