Category Archives: Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

The Right Way to Grieve

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It’s been a month since Brock died, and I’m still locked in this weird, self-conscious state of shock/numbness.

Shelley from Cowichan Hospice brought me a book on grief, Coping With Grief: A Guide for the Bereaved Survivor, and I went straight to the chapters on Shock, Denial and Emotional Numbness — which, comfortingly, were the first chapters. I guess I’m not the only one to react to loss this way.

I found this helpful bit in the Emotional Numbness chapter:

The reactions of shock, denial, body numbness, and emotional numbness all work together to protect you from the incredible overload that would take place in your mind, body, and spirit if you received the full impact of your loss all at once.

While these naturally protective reactions may be confusing to you and to other people in your life, your brain’s natural tendency is to defend itself from pain by insulating and numbing itself.

Coping with Grief, by Bob Baugher, Ph.D.

This passage and the relevant chapters reassured me that I wasn’t a sociopath. I felt normal for a whole week.

But then I started to wonder at myself again.

Soon after we got home from Brock’s memorial service, Isaac found one of the jumbo photos of Brock from the memorial and put it where he thought it belonged: on Brock’s Lazy Boy recliner. Every time I notice Brock smiling from his chair, I smile back. What a handsome man. He looks so young.

Shouldn’t this photo of Brock make me sad? I don’t understand why it makes me smile. I talk to it. We defer to it in conversations. Isaac and I show it the art work Isaac brings home from preschool.

I don’t understand how I’m able to grocery shop, go swimming with Isaac, pay our bills, get a haircut, make phone calls — and all without sobbing.

When Brock and I explored a question, we’d make a list. So:

Theories as to why I am not overcome with grief after losing my life partner

  • I’m in the shock/denial/numb stage of grief and this is perfectly natural and normal and someday I will experience (probably) the other stages when my mind/body/spirit begin to accept that Brock is gone.
  • I’m a sociopath. Evidence: I have always loved change and never get sad when saying goodbye. I inflict minor life traumas on myself all the time just for fun, such as extreme hair cuts and changing jobs.
  • I’m too busy preparing for our December move and taking care of Isaac to have time to be sad. I might need to book some time to sob in the hospice garden.
  • I repressed my grief constantly while Brock was sick, because it didn’t make sense to me to feel sad when my sweetie was still RIGHT THERE to hug and love and talk to. I made myself postpone grieving until I actually had something to grieve (i.e. Brock’s death). I did that for almost three years. Then Brock died, and by the end he was so weak and sick that it’s hard to mourn his death — there really was no alternative for him, after so much decline. The Brock most people are mourning is the Brock from 1-3 years ago, or pre-cancer Brock, or child-Brock or teenager-Brock, and the future this Brock could have had, but it’s really hard for me to remember that Brock rather than the sick Brock I loved most recently.

That last bullet is getting long, so we’ll continue the thought in normal formatting.

I wish I could better remember the Brock of three years ago, before he got cancer. I should have made more videos of our daily life, or transcribed conversations.

One question I’ve considered over the past three years is whether it’s better to know someone is dying, so that you can deal with stuff in advance and say goodbye, or whether it’s better to have them die suddenly. I always thought the gradual death was better. But now I’m not sure. A sudden death leaves you with a clear memory of the person you’ve lost. I’m furious with cancer for not only killing Brock, but also for eating away at my memories of him. I can barely remember our normal routines before cancer made me a caregiver and Brock dependent. It doesn’t even feel weird to sit without him at the dinner table or go grocery shopping, because he’d stopped doing those things when he was still alive.

I wish I’d allowed myself more space to mourn Brock’s decline and his terminal diagnosis while he was still alive. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t feel so stuck now.

And I want to grieve Brock’s death properly, both because I think it’s healthy, and because he deserved it. It feels disrespectful to be so functional, so soon after losing him. Brock was the most incredible person I’ve ever met. I loved him and wanted to spend my life with him. I know that cancer isn’t logical, but it’s just ridiculous that he (of all people!) was dealt that card. Brock’s brain would have made our world a better place, if he’d only had more time to develop and use it.

Maybe it would help if I could move all our stuff back into our tiny house on the farm, go to sleep in our bed, and then wake up just as I did every morning for eight years — and discover that Brock isn’t sleeping beside me, because he’s died of cancer. Maybe then I’d be able to feel something.

Our Plan B Life, Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

Choosing a Future

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Earlier this year, at my request, Brock helped me plan out my and Isaac’s post-Brock future.

When I first brought up the subject, he resisted, because he always thought the dead should have no say in what the living do. The only instructions/exceptions he’d offered around his death were that he wanted to donate his eyes (and his organs, until cancer disqualified him), and give his body to UBC’s medical program, and that he didn’t want any religion at his funeral. Also, he asked that the food served at the memorial reception not be too good, after I’d said we could hire a chef friend to cater it, because Brock didn’t want to miss out on a gourmet feast.

Anyhoo.

It wasn’t that I wanted to think about a post-Brock future. Every time my brain veered out of happy denial and started to grasp that Brock would die, I would lose it emotionally.

But I also suspected that, if I didn’t have something positive to look forward to post-Brock, I would be stuck in a blackhole of grief.

Also, Stoic philosophy advises imagining worst case scenarios briefly, both because it helps prepare you for that potential and because it then makes you more appreciative of your present.

So one day I gave myself 30 minutes to imagine a future without Brock. It was very hard to do, because (obviously) I didn’t want that future.

I made a list of what made me happy, and what I wanted my future self to be doing. I wanted:

  • more outdoor physical activity for me and Isaac, like hiking and snowboarding/skiing.
  • to travel, specifically in the form of long walks (like Hadrian’s Wall and the Camino de Santiago, Newfoundland’s T’Railway and PEI’s Confederation Trail). I would need some reliable child care to be able to do these trips without Isaac, until he was old enough to come with me.
  • more crafts (I was jealous of my Mom’s crafty get-togethers, especially around the holidays).
  • to get to know my sister Evy better. We haven’t lived in the same town since 1999, and I suspected I’d like adult-Evy a lot.
  • to spend more time with my parents, doing crafts with Mom and outdoor activities with my Dad.

I made my list, and got excited. I liked this future. But … most of these goals meant moving back to my hometown of Invermere, in the East Kootenays of British Columbia. That was a Major Life Decision, and it felt wrong to make a Major Life Decision without Brock’s input.

So Brock and I discussed my post-Brock life. He liked the idea of Isaac growing up in an athletic, physically active community like Invermere. (This is a town that has “snow days,” when people aren’t expected to go to work because it’s understood that everyone will be at the ski hill.) Brock had no problem with the idea of our moving: he pointed out that we’d moved to Duncan to farm, and the farm was no longer a factor. We’d often talked about moving to California, or Chicago, or “franchising” our farm model across Canada and moving around to start up farming operations.

Once we had a plan, I was able to relax and enjoy our day-to-day moments together. I think Brock liked knowing we had a plan too. In his final month, he spent a lot of time studying money management strategies so that we would have a financial plan in place as well. He offered everything as “it’s up to you, but here’s one option …”

Brock died September 20, a week after Isaac began his second year of preschool.

The usual advice in grief books is not to make any Major Life Decisions for a year after a spouse dies. Because Brock and I had already made our plan, together, the only decision I had to make was when we would implement it. I decided to delay our move until December: Isaac will be able to finish his next two rounds of swimming lessons, and can end his martial arts, gymnastics and preschool at the Christmas break. I want to keep Isaac’s lifestyle status quo for a bit longer: losing his dad is enough trauma.

When I tell people about our moving, some have been disconcerted. I don’t think it occurred to them that Brock’s death would mean me and Isaac relocating. It’s a second loss, after suffering the terrible first loss of Brock to cancer. And it’s an intentional loss: I’m choosing to leave our community, whereas no one chose for Brock to die.

But I think our moving just emphasizes how devastating it is to me and Isaac to lose Brock. Isaac lost his daddy. Instead of growing old beside the man I love, I’m a widow at the ridiculously young age of 37. The future Brock and I wanted and worked toward has been annihilated.

Isaac and I can’t have the future we wanted, but we have a very nice Plan B ahead of us. I’m grateful it’s a Plan B I was able to make with Brock.