The other foot

            On some levels, this one isn’t about me.  Then again, it’s my blog, so of course it’s about me.

            A friend has come down with cancer.  I’ll say no more about that, because it isn’t my story to tell.  It was always known this would happen.  If not to this person, then to another person in my life.  Or to me.  Cancer keeps busy and there’s always someone in its sights.

            With that in mind, it’s not as if I’m having traumatic flashbacks because someone I know is fighting the big C.  Even if I were, that would not be the issue that requires focus right now.  This person has a fight ahead and needs to focus on that.  To say it’s “irrelevant” is still to assign too much weight to how I feel about knowing someone else is fighting cancer.

            And yet … it opens up odd memories.  Of course, the news of the diagnosis was couched to me with a lot of “Well, you knows…” because, well, I do know.  I know too much about survival rates and treatment options and the effects of chemotherapy and how this weighs on a family.  I know all of that.

            What I don’t really know is how to be on this side of the equation.  Until Colin, there was only one person to whom I was terribly close who had ever had a cancer diagnosis, and that was my father.  And, it sounds terrible, but he was such a heavy smoker that, when he got his diagnosis, I think most everyone in the family just thought “Well, of course.”  Even as he fought the cancer, his health mostly suffered from the emphysema and its side effects.  That’s actually what killed him though, of course, the cancer didn’t help.

            So, when I heard, I said the “I’m so sorry” and “Let me know what I can do to help,” which I meant.  Of course I meant it.  But then, what else do I do?

            And it’s started to make me realize how people I know probably had no idea how to deal with me starting in 2016.  On the one hand, I think I ought to check in every few days to see how everyone is doing.  On the other hand, I remember the annoyance with a person here and a person there who seemed to almost be vibing off or our trauma.  “Grief junkies,” I called them.

            I’m careful in how I start communications.  I remember that I hated it when people asked “How are you doing?” because, good lord, how on Earth would anyone have thought I was doing as I contemplated my son’s death?  So, I try to ask “What’s up?” and “What’s new?” not even knowing if the questions trigger everyone the way the did me and if this is an unnecessary precaution or something everyone goes through.

            It’s just interesting, seeing it from this side.  Wondering if I’m doing too much, or doing too little.  And it makes me wonder if I’ve been fair to all the other innocent bystanders when Colin got his diagnosis.  To this day, there are people I barely speak to.  I mean, if they address me, I say ‘hello.’  But if they’re walking up one side of the street and I’m walking down the other, it’s not as if I make the effort to cross the street to say ‘hi.’  But how could they have not been tongue-tied and useless as they watched us cope with Colin?  It’s not like I have any better ideas for my friend than “bring over a batch of cookies,” at which point I remember how useless it made me feel when people treated us like a charity case.  But I was also grateful for the food.  I ate it because I needed it.  But I also cried after it got delivered.

            Noah goes climbing now with a program run by the hospice.  I know that the one carer – Momo; the one for whom I have a special disdain – lives around there.  He bailed on us after a couple of days because he thought it was demeaning to have a 5-year-old yelling at him.  I mean, of course he got yelled at.  This was a 5-year-old who had no idea what was happening to him and didn’t understand why strangers kept showing up in his bedroom.  He was a 5-year-old who didn’t understand why he had been robbed of the ability to speak and eat.  So, of course he lashed out.  And Momo used that as a pretext to bail on us.  So now, after I drop off Noah, I have this dream of crawling the streets until I find his home, ringing his bell and, if he’s home, having a good yell at him.

            I’m not going to do it, but it shocks me that I still have these feelings.  And then I see myself kind of stammering for words when the roles are reversed and, well, I’m sorry, Momo is still a terrible person, but maybe I have to let up a bit.

            As I type this, I had my first dream in ages involving Colin last night.  Nothing much happened.  We just looked for a restaurant.  It fills me with hope that, wherever he is, he’s eating right. 

            Also as I type this, Murphy got into a crate of stuff of Christina’s and started chewing on a Cars toy of Colin’s.  It never ends.

            It’s all just going to keep going.  This will not be the last case of cancer in my circle of friends and family.  And this will not be the last time I feel helpless.  I guess I just need to think more about how all of us deal with it.