When I learned of Stella’s tumour I thought about D and the possibility of cancer – but this voice, this other voice in the back of my head said “drowning”. The voice tends to be right about things. But it’s not psychic – it’s just intuitive. So I’m not sure where “drowning” came from but I don’t really think I predicted how my son will die. Instead, it might be based in the fact that I can’t swim – so if anything happens to D in the water on my watch, then it’s likely he will die – with great potential that I die trying to save him, or just stop living after having watched him die and been utterly impotent to do anything to change it.
But that’s just blink-of-the-eye stuff. That’s being in a position to save him and failing.
My father had cancer – terminal cancer. Small cell lung cancer. The average life span after diagnosis is 13 months. Dad lasted a little longer than 2 years. For most of it, he had hope that he’d live. Misplaced hope. This was probably based on how good he felt when he first received treatment. It inspired him to quit smoking, buy and use a juicer and drink Essiac tea. He fought. But the tumours came back, like they were supposed to. And the next round of treatment kicked him on his ass and kept kicking. He was what I thought to be utterly emaciated (I later learned what utterly emaciated would look like). Putting his coat and boots on exhausted him when I was visiting and the well stopped pumping (meaning the toilet stopped flushing) I found him on the couch in his coat and boots, apologizing that he couldn’t get up to help me.
A little while later was palliative care, brain tumours disorienting him in every way — making him fall, not understand where he was or why, ultimately sending him back in time, taking away his language. The last time I saw him, two days before he died, I thought I was in the wrong room. The man gasping on the bed was impossibly skinnier, his eyes a vivid pale blue (my dad’s eyes were dark blue). But it was him. Still fighting but maybe by now just reflexively fighting for breath.
Once there was nothing left of him, he died.
I never thought my dad should fight the cancer. The cancer was a 6’3″, 285 lb mass of angry muscle in the ring. The cancer was a gun in a knife fight. The cancer was the atom bomb. There was no hope of winning this fight, or even coming out of it with dignity (not in this society where you’re sneered at if you don’t put your ailing cat down because it’s the “humane thing to do”, but we have to force our family members to suffer through every last inhumane second of their illness).
I don’t know what Dad really thought of the whole thing. We talked often, but not about things of substance. I don’t know at what point he realized he wouldn’t win his fight, or if he ever wondered if he was fighting for the wrong thing. Instead of getting the most out of today he seemed to waste it fighting for tomorrow. I don’t know if at any point he ever wished someone would end the fight for him.
Stella’s moms are fighting for Stella to have the best life she can in her remaining days. They aren’t fighting to add to those days (unless ice-cream has cancer fighting properties). And I expect I’d want to do the same thing in their position.
Well, on that cheerful end: if anyone is reading this, it would be lovely if you would go to stellabrunermethven.com and donate by selecting “send Support” from the right hand menu. They’ve taken leaves of absence from their jobs to do all they can to have Stella’s remaining days be the best they can be.
