What I know

It hits like a ton of bricks some times, knowing what I know.

And I mean actual knowledge, not my experiences. For example, a while back, a group of friends dared to meet up because Germany had not yet descended into its current state of virus spread. This and that was discussed and, at one point, the conversation turned to the brush with a tumor one member of the group had.

That’s not my story to tell. I think what struck me is how much I knew. People were asking how dangerous it had been and what it could have done. I wasn’t saying anything, because it wasn’t my tumor. But man, I could have dropped right in. I know so much about the different chances a person has with a malignant versus a benign tumor and the odds of a reoccurrence and what your chances are if you get a reoccurrence, etc etc etc. Mind you, I’m not trying to sell myself off as an expert or suggest that this isn’t knowledge you couldn’t find with a Google search. I think the difference is that I know I didn’t know this all a decade ago. I would’ve had to do the Google search back then before I could have provided an intelligent opinion about how worried one should be about a benign tumor.

And the thing is, cancer comes up all the time. I edit so many stories a day and a certain number of them will be about health and a certain number of those will be about cancer and there comes a point every now and then where I’m reading an article about a novel new treatment or diagnostic. Those are even harder, because I know enough to feel I get more out of the article than the average person, but I also realize I don’t know all the details to know if it would have been applicable in Colin’s situation.

The thing is, I protected myself a bit from all the details of his cancer. What could it help, I asked myself, knowing the specifics about this tumor? It wasn’t as if I could take a crash course in oncology and cure this. So, while I now know more than the average person, there are painful gaps in my personal story. It goes beyond Colin. I couldn’t tell you a thing about my Dad’s cancer, except that it was in his lungs. Is it natural to want to shield yourself from this information? Was I hoping to ignore it all and make it go away?

Towards the end, when I was afraid that any interaction I had with him would be his last on this Earth, one of the nurses asked me if I was handling his feeding or something and I said that I didn’t think I had it in me. “Oh, you’re just going to be a parent now.” And it wasn’t mean, the way it was said. It was just true that, for months, we were so hands-on with Colin and then came a point where I couldn’t think of anything better to do than lie next to him, unresponsive as he was, because I figured that would do more for him than food. Maybe I should have done that earlier, because the little I did learn about cancer still haunts me. I don’t want to feel this need to grab the spotlight when someone else’s brush with the disease comes up. But then, I guess it’s not just cancer. People complain about the stresses of raising their kids in front of me and it’s all I can do not to depress the room and comment about how having a dead child is harder than anything a living one has thrown at me.

Here’s things I don’t know. I don’t know why my emotions are short-circuited. I don’t know why music videos that used to make me laugh – which I still find funny – cause me to break down. I don’t know what it means that I dreamed about him last night and that our main interaction was his need to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if this is the Christmas where it’s going to feel normal to have a reduced family or if it still isn’t going to feel like enough.

I think about the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” often and wonder what I would do if there was a service that let me erase memories and experiences from my head. I’d like to think I wouldn’t call them up, but I imagine the temptation would be great. I liked it better when my head wasn’t filled with all this. I liked it better when I didn’t question everything I did during his cancer about once a week or so. I liked it better when he was here.