The times she didn't die

Sometimes when I'm feeling sorry for myself, I flip it around and think about just how lucky I am to have had Sandy for as many years as I did.

I think about all the times I could have lost her.

The danger her gallbladder attacks posed while she waited for insurance to kick in so she could have surgery.

The car accident that pretty much destroyed the working components of the car but left Sandy unscathed except for embarrassment. Especially since I'd feared for weeks that she'd have an accident of some kind, given her deepening depression. I felt such relief that the event had occurred and she had survived it.

The terrifying seizures she had in January 2004, full-blown tonic clonic seizures (what used to be called grand mal) just a few hours apart, which turned out to be a reaction to medication and which caused no lasting harm (except to my peace of mind).

This was the third day after her accident in 2005.
In earlier pictures, we documented her injuries
and her expression was grim. By day 3, she was
able to smile about how quickly she was healing.

The infections that raged in her body before and during chemo in 2006. Pumping toxins into a body can be very deadly, and the drugs certainly tried to take her down. But she came through it.

The bike accident in 2005 that occurred when a car cut her off, shoving her into the curb. She was bruised, bloody, and in shock, but she got home safely and healed.

The collision in May 2010, when a driver pulled across the bike lane as Sandy was entering the intersection, heading downhill at about 20 mph. Her injuries were painful and they left her in worse shape for the upcoming cancer fight, but the collision itself did no obviously lasting damage.

All the times she could have died before we even got together, especially the time she almost drowned.

It wasn't that Sandy's life was particularly precarious. We all have similar lists of near-misses, whether from injury or illness: the traffic accidents that almost happened or that could easily have been worse, the tornado that hits the house two blocks over, the fall down the stairs, the disease caught just in time. We're fragile beings. These elaborate machines we call our bodies are delicate, relying on tenuous relationships between each other and the world. It's really quite amazing that we are, in fact, so resilient.

It may seem odd that I cheer myself by remembering times of crisis. But the body memory that comes from each is less about the fear during the crisis and more about the relief that came after. That full-body sensation of gratitude when I compared what was with what I feared might have been.

Even on June 16, 2011, we basked in relief that she hadn't had a stroke, as we'd suspected. If someone had told us she'd die just 33 days later — and suffer immeasurably during many of the days to come — we'd have celebrated less. But like her doctors, we thought everything was going according to plan, except for a complicated migraine that appeared to be gone now. She was still Sandy; her brain was still her own. I hadn't lost her, and she hadn't lost herself.

So yes, I wish desperately we'd had another 50 years together — and I'm bitter, definitely, that we won't have that time. But I am honestly incredibly grateful for every day we shared. And that perspective is incredibly cheering.

Ambivalence

I just handed off another chunk of work, crossing off one more item that I need to complete before my current client commitments end on May 30. I'm taking off the entire month of June, maybe longer, and I'm giddy at the thought of spending lots of quality time pulling the garden into shape, catching up with friends, and completing long-neglected tasks around the house.

I'm also nervous.

I need a break. I returned to work a few weeks after Sandy died, and though I haven't always worked long hours, I've had at least one project in progress every day since. My energy level is still not up to par, so I've put off things that are more personally meaningful in order to meet my work commitments. I'm ready for a vacation.

So many of our plans had to be reworked in 2010. Because
Sandy had been having trouble catching her breath while
cycling, we'd already changed plans from biking to Moses
Lake on Memorial Day weekend to biking to Snoqualmie
Falls for the night. After her bone scan showed a femoral
tumor and she couldn't bike at all, we just drove there for
a getaway. Not what we'd originally hoped for, but it did
feel like a very welcome mini-vacation after all.

But I don't trust the universe to give me this time for rejuvenation. Three years ago, I planned a sabbatical from work. I thought I'd take two months to do all the things I'm hoping to do this June. (In fact, I still have the spreadsheet of all that I'd planned to accomplish then. Does that make me sound terribly nerdy?) In 2010, my work projects were to end by the first of May, but one slipped out a few days, so it was May 6 that I handed off the final product. And it was the night of May 6 that we had an answering machine message about suspicious spots in Sandy's lungs on a chest Xray. I was glad not to have to work for the next couple of months so I could care for Sandy during a very difficult time, but I didn't get my sabbatical.

In 2011, I stopped working in mid-April and planned to avoid any new projects until Sandy had successfully transitioned to a new chemo drug. I didn't want to commit to anything major because I wanted to be flexible in case we ran into any snags along the way. But I expected to have plenty of time to garden and catch up on home maintenance and the like. Instead, much of my time in late April, May, and early June went to trying to ease Sandy's pain; each time we finally figured out how to manage one symptom, a new one would emerge. We did have a vacation, in name, but it wasn't much of a vacation for me. And then, of course, we were in the hospital and in hospice and, if anything, my long list of neglected tasks grew. I didn't make much progress on them in the weeks after Sandy died; I was doing well to eat three meals a day, get to therapy, and spend time with comforting friends. And then I started working again by mid-August.

So now I yearn to have days that are all mine, days of losing myself in tasks enjoyed and completed, days of check marks next to to-do lists. And I'm less than a week away from that reality. Or at least, that's the plan. But I can't help feeling anxious about what happens when I dare to plan to take some time for myself.