As I’m writing this, it’s another New Year’s of me sitting next to the dog while he hides on his blanket and curses whomever discovered fireworks. It’s our third year into this deal, and I think we’re into a routine. We spend about three days before New Year’s with him becoming increasingly nervous about going outside, since the noise-making kind of kicks into high gear already on December 27/28. The night of December 30 we only make it to the corner, because that’s as far as he’s willing to risk his life to pee. And then, on New Year’s Eve, I take him on this gigantic walk behind this abandoned airport near our house so he gets in all his exercise and hopefully relieves himself because, once I get him into the house around 4 p.m., he’s not going to poke his nose out the door again until about 5 a.m. on New Year’s Day, probably not even if the house is on fire.
So, here we sit and it seems as good a time to blog as any. As usual, once I sit down to write, the few ideas I had about what to comment on fly from my brain. Part of that is a function of me having fewer things to say. Being the father of a dead child is just what I do now. It’s harder to experience something that shocks me enough to rekindle the initial gloom of 2019 (which is probably a good thing). I’m not saying there isn’t gloom. I’m just saying that it’s now such a regular part of my day that it takes a lot to make it register.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t moments. Like, having lunch with colleagues a few months ago, we were talking about Knut, this baby polar bear who became a media sensation at Berlin’s zoo almost 20 years ago. You couldn’t escape this bear if you turned on the TV or opened a newspaper for about two years straight. So, that came up while we were talking to an out-of-town colleague about weird Berlin things. And it came up that part of the fame was linked to this trainer who essentially lived with Knut from birth. But the trainer died, at only 44, in 2008. And then, Knut died in 2011, of a brain tumor, we were told.
Which isn’t quite true. From an exhaustive search on Wikipedia, I see that the bear died of some kind of brain infection, not cancer. But it wasn’t like I knew this to debate the point there at the lunch. And besides, the issue was when the bear’s brain cancer came up, a colleague half-joked that maybe Knut developed the brain cancer because he was so sad about his trainer’s death.
Sigh. I barely know her. I know I’ve told her I have a dead child, but I have no idea if she knows it was a brain tumor that did it. And, even if I told her, I wouldn’t expect her to remember that more than half a year later after I told her. But still, there’s that moment when you want to jump up and say “That’s now how it works!” before you realize you’d only cause a scene and make everyone feel awful. So you sit and keep at your lunch and just think “Yep, that’s my life now.”
And, as always happens, I remember things as I begin to type. Christina is in the midst of a correspondence with the hospice right now. When we moved into the hospice in 2019, one of the first things they had us do was build a lantern. It wasn’t much more than a baby food jar with decorations glued to it. The deal is, every child gets one and it’s hung by their door while they’re receiving care there. For the kids who come and go – there’s a lot of business in the hospice taking the kids for a week here or there so their families can have a vacation without all the stresses of caring for a special-needs child – it makes a certain sense. You show up, you have your lantern by your door. And, when you leave, it goes back to hang in this room off the garden entrance. The walls are painted to look like a tree, so you have the illusion that dozens, maybe hundreds, of these jars are hanging from the tree. Your jar always goes back to the same spot, so you can pick it up when you arrive and put it back when you leave.
It never made as much sense with Colin, since he was on a one-way ticket when we arrived. But his lantern was there at his door the whole time he was receiving care there and then, when he died, it was taken down to the tree/waiting room. We were told it was now going to be there permanently, along with the other permanent lanterns of kids who are dead, and next to those that rotated up and down as kids came and went.
Except, a few weeks ago, we got a notice that they were redoing the room and they were going to take down all the lanterns. It doesn’t sound like they’re going to put them back up. At the very least, we were told to come pick up Colin’s lantern.
It’s not that we don’t want it. It’s just that we want it there. I can’t quite tell you why. We don’t visit the hospice all that often. It’s almost an hour’s drive. And, when I do go there for the men’s group meetings, I usually head to the pond to see his rock (which I have to repaint soon, in another project I’ve got to coordinate with the hospice), so I honestly hadn’t seen the lantern in years.
But I still liked having it there. And now it feels like someone wants to rip out my fingernails when they say they don’t want it there any more.
I mean, on the plus side, it’s good to know that the heartstrings can still be plucked there and that I haven’t gone completely emotionally dead. But that’s cold comfort. I could live without it. I suppose we’ll have to call them in the next few days to find out what’s up.
In good news, I spent the time between breakfast and Murphy’s destress walk going through our finances and finally managed to pay off our final chemo/immunotherapy bill. I’m sure other bills regarding Christina’s cancer treatment are still working our way to us, but none of them are for chemotherapy or immunotherapy, so that’s something. And, for anyone who doesn’t know, her treatment is done for now and she’s even returned to work, which gives me a great way to end a blog entry on a happy note for a change.