Tag Archives: Brock

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.

Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

Things We Say at the End

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I want to tell you about this part of Brock dying, because I don’t think many people know about it. I didn’t, before I read Maggie Callanan’s Final Gifts.

When we get close to death, that line between being awake (conscious) and being asleep (un/sub-conscious) starts to break down. A common metaphor is having a foot in both worlds at the same time.

I knew about this stage, having read Final Gifts and some helpful books from Cowichan Hospice, but still didn’t recognize it as a sign that Brock was close to death when I saw him entering the stage. That’s probably thanks to denial. Denial is an amazing thing.

Anyhoo, Brock told me about the weird things he started to think, feel and even taste in the month before he died. Anyone who knew him well will know that he was a very scientific, practical guy, and was not a poet or abstract. But the first “weird” thing he told me was that he had started to feel like he was (sometimes) three people.

For example: he said he knew he’d have a good sleep if all three of him were ready to go to bed. If one or two of him were missing, he’d have a hard time falling asleep or wouldn’t sleep well.

Knowing Brock, this was crazy pants talk.

And he wasn’t half-asleep or drunk when he told me this. He was just normal Brock, trying to explain something he experienced that was hard to explain. And yet . . . he wasn’t old-version-of-Brock enough for me to feel okay saying, “That’s crazy pants talk,” even though old-version-of-Brock would have thought being three people at once was ridiculous.

This three-people phenomenon happened a lot.

I once brought him a glass of chocolate milk, because he’d asked for it, and he said: “Phew. I can drink that. I thought I’d have to drink all three glasses.”

Or when he made a physically strenuous journey to the washroom at the hospital, with help from me and a nurse, and he said: “Oh, that wasn’t as hard as I expected. I didn’t have to do it three times.”

At one point, Brock and I brainstormed where his three people came from. The father, the son and the holy ghost. Ego, super-ego and Id. Okay, a lot of cultural patterns occur in threes. Maybe there’s a reason, given Brock’s experience of being three people at once.

I want to share some of the Brock quotes I wrote down in the weeks before he died. I’m going to do this not to make fun of the crazy-pants things he said, but because I want you to understand how surreal this time was, and maybe to prepare you for when you witness your own dying loved ones approach their deaths.

I wrote these quotes down because I thought I’d be able to share them with Brock someday, when he was all better, and we’d laugh about how funny he’d been. I thought this knowing full well that he was never going to get better.

Here we go:

“I was about to offer you whatever I was eating in my head.”

“I think we’re done with the bread, if you want to put that away. And, as I’m saying this, I’m realizing there is no bread.”
(Said while I gave Brock a back massage.)

“I was going to ask you for another spanokopita. And then I realized I hadn’t just eaten a spanokopita.”

“Is that the smallest letter?”
(Said September 10, ten days before Brock died.)

“What’s that noise? A bug zapper?”
(Said while battling an infection in the hospital, about the noise from his IV drip.)

“Where’s the car parked?”
(While half asleep on the toilet. Travel is a common theme among the dying, apparently. I assured him that it was parked nearby, and I knew where it was.)

“People have been saying that it’s a good time to invest, looking back.”
(Said while falling asleep sitting up. Brock was always nervous about my money management skills.)

Final Gifts emphasizes how important it is to simply listen to these statements from people when they’re close to death. Disagreeing or trying to correct them can cause anxiety and self-doubt and embarrassment, and discourage them from sharing more of their experience.

I feel lucky that Brock told me about his three-people feelings, and that I got to witness this amazing, strange stage of his dying. I wanted to share it with you too.