Every now and again I remember what my life was like in the last few months of cancer as though it was a bad dream. Not Nathan, never Nathan, but my life... what I did, how I lived. When it wasn't the people at Starbucks who knew me, but the people at the pharmacy.
A while back Kara brought up compression socks...
I'd forgotten about compression socks.
I couldn't believe it... I hated those darn things. It was like I was torturing Nathan... and we had to take them off and put them on so often.... and it took so long... 15 minutes or more per sock sometimes. And it was just so wrong because you are 1) supposed to be able to put on and take off your own socks and 2) it should take 5 minutes tops and 3) it shouldn't hurt.
But it did.
I was so emotionally and physically exhausted that I think I lived a good portion in a daze... not really knowing what I was doing, just getting by.
And so looking back it barely feels like it was me. I was consumed with being a caretaker...
I hope that Nathan didn't feel like I'd checked out. He deserved better than that.
Oh I know for sure that Nathan didn't feel like you checked out. Because you didn't check out. You might not remember it very well, but I do. You did a good job the whole time - all the way from the beginning to the end.
ReplyDeleteSure, you got frustrated sometimes - but not as often as your life was frustrating. And you didn't take it out on him. It was amazing that you didn't. But you didn't. You persevered.
And you two played games. And you made "sammiches." And you kept laughing in the face of cancer. And after, you have laughed in the face of death - and b/c you have, Nathan has too. And I think that cancer and death must really hate you both for it. I think they probably say "effin' Nathan and Renee" way more often than you say "effin' cancer and death."
Except I'm sure that they use the actual f-word, because they are cancer and death and that's how they roll.
...
This comment has gotten really weird. So I'll stop now.