Tag Archives: Stoicism

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

A Stoic Response to Loss

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Sometime after Isaac was born in 2013, I lost my sense of smell. Or maybe it happened while I was pregnant. My relationship with food roller-coasted dramatically during those 34.5 weeks: I was constantly queasy for the first three months, to such an extent that I couldn’t even walk through a grocery store without feeling sick. I was grateful that we lived on a farm, our closest neighbours hundreds of feet away, because I could wander over to an isolated corner of our property and try to breathe in enough fresh air to fight down the nausea, or vomit in the privacy of the scrub trees.

Then, around the three month mark, the switch suddenly flipped and I loved food again. It was a distinct moment, as I entered a grocery store in Cobble Hill, and I almost cried with relief (and pregnancy hormones). Suddenly the shelves of food called out to me. I remembered how good my favourite foods smelled and tasted, and I filled my shopping cart with everything I hadn’t been able to stomach since the start of my pregnancy.

And then, around this time or within the next year, my nose stopped working.

I wondered how it was that others were able to notice Isaac needed a diaper change. I couldn’t smell anything. I learned to pat his bum constantly, to check whether he needed a dry diaper.

Family rhapsodized over the scent of a newborn, but I thought they were just being weird and this was another of those “romanticizing parenthood” delusions.

Visiting friends commented on the manure-y air when a farmer neighbour fertilized their pasture. I never noticed the smell, but thought I’d just become acclimatized.

Brock paced the house, hunting down a rank can of garbage or bag of compost, unable to sleep. I teased him for his overly sensitive nose.

Finally I realized I was no longer smelling freshly-cut grass, or my cups of green tea, or the lemon filling of my pies — my three favourite smells.

I asked my (award-winning) family doctor about my missing sense, and he said it was probably a stress thing, what with the pre-eclampsia/premature birth and Brock’s cancer and all. He had a point: my life has been a soap opera.

And then I realized that I couldn’t taste anything either. Maeve tested me: she put some oil of oregano drops in my mouth. Apparently oil of oregano tastes revolting and smells worse. I only experienced the sensation of it going down my throat. It was hot and my eyes watered, but I couldn’t smell or taste anything.

There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about my missing senses, so I’m learning to appreciate this new way of experiencing the world.

A family friend sent me a spectacular bouquet of stargazer lilies when Brock died. I remember how these flowers are supposed to smell, and I can’t experience that right now, but I am floored by how beautiful they are. I spend a lot of time studying the blossoms, all the variations of pink and white and the interesting textures on the petals.

Last week I joined a long table of family at the Old Firehouse Wine Bar for Old Fashioneds (Brock’s favourite drink) and ordered the meat & cheese & bread plate: the bread was drizzled with truffle oil and sprinkled with rock salt. The bread was amazing. I think I could taste the salt (or at least experience how it felt in my mouth), and I loved the textures of the bread and cheese. Jeff made me non-alcoholic drinks of various colours (and, presumably, flavours), and I felt the tonic water fizz down my throat.

I like to conduct little experiments to test my senses. Today I composted three-day-old crab shells (from a farewell feast when my visiting sister left for home) and sniffed mightily, trying to smell what I’m pretty sure must have been a horrible, strong stench. I could smell a little bit of sea creature-ness, but nothing unpleasant.

I still stop and sniff every flower I find, mostly to be a good role model to Isaac.

I’ve been writing all of this out as it comes to me, trying to articulate my experience, and now I see all kinds of metaphors in my sensory loss.

I discovered Stoicism (the ancient Greek philosophy of life) while listening to an Ideas interview on CBC Radio, while driving home from the Sidney Farmers Market in 2010-ish. The interviewee, William B. Irvine, had written a book called A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I don’t know which came first — my Stoic approach to life, or my discovering Stoicism and striving to adopt its approach. All I know is that friends and family often comment on how I’m able to remain happy (and how Brock was able to be happy) despite the life challenges we’ve faced. Stoicism — and, specifically, Irvine’s Guide to the Good Life — articulates how I deal proactively and reactively to stress.

One main tenet of Stoicism is to recognize what we don’t have control over (e.g. cancer) and instead focus on what we do have control over (e.g. our quality of life). We couldn’t cure Brock, but we could make his final years, months and days extraordinary, by road-tripping across Canada and hosting election parties. Instead of weeping over Brock as he died, we watched Lord of the Rings as a family and karaoked “Mr. Jones.”

I lost my ability to smell or taste. I had a difficult pregnancy, almost died from eclampsia, and then became mom to a premature, underweight baby. My 38-year-old husband just died after living with cancer for three years.

But I smile most of the time, had a good laugh with my dad this morning, and continue to water a vase of stargazer lilies with the hope of seeing more blossoms.