Waiting

Waiting

By Nancy Richards

           My son is so angry, screaming at me. He doesn’t realize I’ve shut him out, I can't hear what he is saying. Whatever I have done, I don’t deserve this reaction from him. I’m his mother. I’ve wondered what he must have said to me over the last two years because he is still upset about it. I’ve asked him what I did, but he refuses to discuss it. This hurts my heart.

           By the time cancer finally took my husband, I was relieved that his struggle was over for him and for me. He was my best friend, my only real friend, and the silence he left behind was deafening. I hadn’t expected the silence. I cried for the loss of the sounds of him. I realized some of the noises I had thought were him, were the house creaking or appliances cycling. But the rest of my grief I had already expended. Maybe this is what had upset my son.

           I had lost my best friend, lover, confidant, my best half quickly and slowly over the last fifteen years. He was the most intelligent, honest, strong, funny, and kind person I had ever met, and his beautiful, bright blue eyes drew me in the moment I looked into them. I knew then that I loved him and would all my life. In January, a month after our first date we were engaged. We bought a house in February, and in October, we married under the canopy of a triangle of three huge oak trees. Our home was each other. We moved a few times and had two boys. We had difficulties, of course, like any couple or family, but those usually had external sources. Our love and commitment were always strong.  

When he retired from a thirty-year career as a police detective, our plan was to move soon after our boys graduated college. He wanted to use his photographic skills to capture the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and maybe be able to sell them. We moved there from the Midwest to follow his dream. But three years after our move, he began to lose his eyesight. The blurriness in his left eye could not be corrected with glasses. Central Serous Retinopathy was the diagnosis. Scarring in the retina layer of the eye because of water retention caused by using steroidal creams used to treat psoriasis on his hands. Stopping the steroids eventually removed the liquid, but the scarring permanently distorted his vision. That was the good news.

           Doctors also found a possibly cancerous nevus in his right eye. For the next five years, he fought with his doctors for an alternative to removing his right eye. He needed to save his only sighted eye. His doctors didn’t have one. I finally went looking on the internet and found a doctor offering proton therapy for eye cancers. I should have looked sooner. He got the treatment but in those five years, the cancer had grown and surrounded the optic nerve.

           We had a slim hope that he might retain his sight. Over the next six months, as the therapy worked to stop the cancer’s growth, his sight diminished until it was gone and as his sight went, we slipped into grief. Sadness, we felt hard. For a man who had depended upon his observations for his livelihood, this loss shattered his core. Anger, we felt even harder. His doctors had known about the doctor offering proton therapy since they first diagnosed the nevus. They hadn’t told us. If they had, he could have gotten treatment before the cancer reached the optic nerve. I still seethe about it, and his anger never left him either. A betrayal so harsh is impossible to forgive and we didn’t.

           I knew we, he needed to move on, move forward and adapt to this new situation, this new life. We made accommodations to his inability to see. I had to take over the driving and the finances as the sight in his left eye deteriorated too. Each bit of our lives that fell onto my shoulders diminished him, his manhood, his self-esteem. I could only watch as he disappeared. He shrunk away from my efforts to help him, involve him, and motivate him. He could not accommodate a loss so profound; could not accept a different and lesser version of himself.

           He went through the motions of living, following his routines, following my lead, and following his convictions, but part of him had died inside. He no longer wanted or made fun. Part of his essence was no longer there. What he didn’t lose, what intensified, was his love for me, his need for my presence, and his physical desire for me. I gave him as much love as I could and supported him as best I knew how, but I felt woefully inadequate. I couldn’t make anything better for him; I couldn’t help him. I mourned what I was losing of him.

           I had to accept what he could not; his new reality. I had to accept this different man than the one I’d married. I had to accept this new man who was just going through the motions of living. In reality, he was just waiting for death and escape from his horrible fate. He could not do more. So, I rotated about him for over fifteen years, getting on with life as it was, loving him, accepting him, and grieving him. When the cancer reappeared, and metastasized, taking him from me, my grief had already been spent. I’d been through those stages of grief so many times.

This final loss was profound but dulled by time. It must have seemed that I was callose or did not care, or not care enough. I did care, though; I was just numb. I couldn’t feel more grief. I couldn’t feel my sons’ grief and loss. I didn’t seem to be able to think clearly and I was exhausted. I didn’t handle things well; I am so sorry that I couldn’t have managed better for my sons’ sakes. This may have been what caused his anger. I'm sure he must be yelling about something else but, deep down, I didn't meet his expectations of me after his father passed. I know though, that I did what I was able to do.

           I am still here, left behind and I have had to find my way through the silence and redefine myself. It took me a while to realize that while he was waiting for death, I had been waiting too, for what would be next.