Personal Journal

Another Update

I’m scared to start writing this. I’m at work, and I’m afraid that I’m going to start crying at worst, or at best, I’m going to end up morose for the rest of my day, and I have a long day to work today.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written. Months. Normally I might feel some guilt for not doing what I said I was going to do last year, which was get back into writing. I don’t feel that. I’ve got bigger things to deal with in life than guilt for not tending to my artist’s soul.

Jean is done with radiation now, I didn’t write a single thing about that experience. I don’t know how I would, right now. This morning all I can think about is how some instinct inside of me realizes that her death from brain cancer is inevitable, and how I try so hard not to acknowledge that and to repress it all of the time. That’s why it’s such a horror to try to write about what is happening and what I’m feeling. I have to repress, all day, every day. I have to accept denial and respect the utility of it. The necessity of it.

I know that Jean does, too.

There are some cases of people with her cancer (Glioblastoma Multiforme) being alive 7 and 9 years after their diagnosis. The medical community either won’t explain how it is that they are surviving, or chooses to believe that the original GBM diagnosis was in error, and that some other type of cancer exists and was successfully repressed by conventional treatments. We have done some research, and we’re trying to do what those others seem to have done to maintain their survival.

That comforts me on the one hand. On the other, though, there is a vibration inside me that perceives the future. I am not a psychic by any sense, but I have had snippets of premonition in my life – glimpses so miniscule into the future that the only real impression they leave me with most times is an understanding that someday, down into the future, I will experience that premonition in the present tense, and I will experience déjà vu.

Several weeks ago, I had a more solid glimpse and one that troubles me greatly. I saw Jean in her hospice bed near death, and felt that horrendous grief of watching her take her last days there. She gazed at me and seeing me struggling emotionally, tried to comfort me and tell me it was okay, even as the tumor in her brain made her communication a struggle. And I know that I’ll see something like that in my future, and I’m scared.

I also had another sleeping dream in which I felt the emptiness of something I had enjoyed being over. I dreamt of a great movie being over, and longing to bring the actors back to share with them the feeling of excitement of a story unfolding, but they were gone, moved on, and the plot was finished. When I awoke I knew that it was a metaphor for missing Jean.

I did it; I made myself cry… It’s hard to break the denial. Now I’ve got to recreate it again and get on with my day.

Jean is still very much alive, and I’m hopeful that perhaps these snippets of mysticism are mere fantasy and fear. Maybe we’ll be in that tiny minority. I can hope. I told someone recently that even if Jean is going to die, I don’t have to accept it. And I think that denial is the only way to maintain the present with such an ugly prognosis dictating your future. Just convince yourself that the prognosis is wrong.

Jean and I get along better now. We still fight, which I actually think is good, given the circumstances. But we fight less, and we get along more, and we spend a lot of time together. I’m doing a lot of miniature painting, my new hobby. And on Saturdays some weekends I’ll go out to the local gaming store and play games with my miniatures. I think that aspect of my creativity gives me a lot of life.

We spend almost every night together, and that’s a comfort to us both. I’ve gotten to be a better cook, and I’m making more vegetarian stuff, which another whole ball of wax. I like cooking. I was saying that if I had to do it all over again, I might go to a cooking school. I like making sustenance for people’s bodies. It is very spiritually gratifying to me. I only wish I were better at it, but like anything, it takes time and practice and a little study too.

So all is not lost in my world. It’s a narrow world, not altogether rich, I would say. But it’s got its comforts, and it’s worth living. I get to spend a lot of time with the one I love, and I know that makes us both very happy.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn