The Hits Just Keep On Coming

As I’d anticipated, today is not as good a day as yesterday. Will did overdo it, and he’s paying for it by feeling tired and woozy. At Mass this morning, he sat through the whole service and even had to be brought Communion by the priest, like a lot of our older parishioners who can’t walk up to the altar.

That’s when I felt my heart rip in two. Again. Tears were streaming down my face as I went up to receive my Lord and Savior, and I replayed the scene over and over in my mind’s eye: the pastoral associate asking Will if he wanted Communion brought to him, his softly whispered “Yes,” the expression on Father’s face as he placed the Host in Will’s hand.

After I was through bawling like a baby, I realized that this was simply another cold, hard dose of reality that was meant to remind me that I’m NOT in the middle of a bad dream from which I’m going to awaken. The hits just keep on coming, and I know it’s not going to be any different anytime soon.

Even so, I desperately want everything to be normal again……I want to lie beside Will in bed every night for the rest of my life and listen to him snore, secure in the knowledge that he’ll always be there. I want to hold his hand as we grow old together, still as much in love as ever, without the shadow of cancer hanging over our heads. Most of all, I want to continue to rely on the steady hands which have guided me through my most difficult life experiences, the love which has sustained me during our darkest days, and the unconditional acceptance that has allowed me to live a full life even with a serious mental illness.

I’m trying to eat this elephant one bite at a time, but thoughts of the future without my “rock” keep sneaking through, unbidden and unwanted. My God, the problems……like where to live, you know, “after”. I know I’ll never be able to stay in this house once he’s no longer here—it contains too many memories—and I’ll need to move anyway because I can’t manage the property alone and don’t want to rattle around in this big old house like a pea in a very large pod.

I’m also half-afraid to live alone. My sister is moving to a town 50 miles away, my kids are scattered all over the Western half of the United States; who will be there for me when I’m in crisis and need a ‘keeper’? Yet I can’t imagine living with any of my children, dear as they are……I couldn’t do that to them. OR me.

I know these are concerns that do have to be addressed, preferably sooner rather than later. But as depressed as I am right now, it’s a dangerous time to be making those decisions; and when you get right down to where the cheese binds, I don’t want to ruin whatever time Will and I have to be together.

But, tomorrow is another day, and his biopsy is scheduled for the morning; soon we will know approximately how bad all this is, and THAT is when the decision-making process will begin in earnest. So in the meantime, I’ll try to put that scenario from Mass out of my mind and watch over him as he dozes in his chair, looking blessedly like the man I’ve known and loved for over three decades.

Sleep, my love……sleep and rest…….rest and sleep.