Home away from home

In the chemo chair Friday I was calculating how many treatments I have left. Four! Four! That is worth a count down. I will be done by the end of April! Yes, there is still the minor issue of ablating heart arrhythmias  and unlocking thumbs, but the end is in sight.

Strangely enough, it will take yet another transition, another moving to Oz, to get back to “normal life,” to set aside a year that has been about hospital visits, IV lines, and side effects. I’m not the same person anymore.

For one thing, I have a married daughter. Today is exactly one month since Elai and Mikael were married. “I do.” It seems impossible that two words, just two syllables spoken in seconds, can change so much (or words like “You have cancer.”)  You’d think I’d be used to that by now...to circumstances changing suddenly. But each time it gets to you. You get used to the process, whether it’s working away at your job, or raising your kids, or loving your spouse, and then suddenly it’s…different. It can be for a good reason, or a bad one. Elai knows about this, living now in her apartment in Wheaton, getting used to being married. My refugee family knows about this, building a new life in Canada. And I know about this, adjusting to a modified body.  I started thinking about the morning of the wedding, when it finally hit me how much change that day could bring.  It was just before the wedding, when the house was silent because all the bridesmaids had left for the church in other cars. Robert and I were left alone with her for just a few minutes. We fussed over her for a few seconds, and then, for the last time, we walked out the front door of our home as “immediate” family. Robert helped her into the front seat of Greg’s bright red truck, tucking her dress around her, and we took our last pictures together of her and us in the get-away car. This was it. The calm before the storm.

Our lives are a constant cycle between calm and storm, slow and sudden, the long processes and the immediate transitions. We wait and plan, and then suddenly the event is upon us, and we are still not prepared. And then it’s over. And we rest and clean up and get back to work. But things have changed. We start pulling out the pictures, piecing together the moments as memories, taking stock, and wondering how the ground could shift so much underfoot. I had never thought much about how weddings are such Oz moments, good ones, but still, ones that shake everything up, especially when your kids live so far away.

Released from the chemo chair, I went downstairs to wait for Janey (she would have stayed with me, but Manal needed a lesson in how to take a bus from her English classes back to her apartment). The “Ukulele Lady” stopped to chat. She is the grad student who organized a ukulele class for five of us cancer patients as a way to build community, have fun, and give the hospital a more positive image.  I learned to play Bruce Cockburn’s Mary Had a Baby, My Lord. We talked about my flight to Florida Saturday to see my parents and the storm that is threatening. (She checked on her phone to see if my flight was cancelled.) We discussed her research—how much easier it is to build trust quickly in a chemo lounge because you know the lady sitting across from you sure isn’t there to sell you anything, and you know she’s facing a battle similar to yours, but as the hospital system gets more and more efficient at moving patients in and out, in and out, we all get that much less of a chance to actually “see” one another, interact and meet one another. With great efficiency, something is lost. Comfort and convenience is gained, but a certain Ozness is lost. Laurie saw that, too. She has a long term illness that keeps her in and out of  the hospital. It’s why she’s trying to add something to the hospital experience. She’s trying to help people “see” one another. This is what we discussed, standing in the lobby of the Niagara Health System (very odd name for a hospital), my new friend Laurie and I, as Janey aided Manal, also my new friend. See, I am not the same person just doing a countdown. I am wandering in Oz, still riding a tornado.