One thing that has struck me throughout the emotional ordeal of cancer has been how my wife and I are intimately connected on our paths but must face very different end points. Now I consider this issue more deeply, I realise it is not an uncommon aspect of life. Still, I am not sure that makes it any easier to handle.
As soon as my health issues became apparent, my wife and I resolved to face whatever lay ahead as a team, supporting and caring for each other and making decisions together. After all, that is what life partnerships are for. There are times in life when we are in acute need of emotional support, and that is when those of us in loving partnerships have an advantage over everybody else. During good times, we might have a tendency to undervalue this enormous asset. If we are smart, we invest a lot to ensure that we are there for each other when we really need help. I cannot imagine how I would be coping emotionally right now without my wife by my side.
The issue is that, while we can face up to the challenges of today as a unified team, we must also prepare for very different futures, and our individual journeys have to reflect this fact.
In the phase we have endured so far, while I have been healthy, our emotional needs have overlapped quite well. We have been able to help each other move past anger and bitterness and have been able to embrace sadness and the loss of our anticipated future joy together. We have each had to come to terms with our own fears but have been able together to reach thankfulness and peace, with a large part of the thankfulness being for each other.
However, like the man in Robert Frost’s wood, our paths will soon diverge. I have to reach acceptance with the prospect of death, and of the pain and suffering that will no doubt arise once the illness becomes more severe. In my wife’s case, she has to face becoming a carer, perhaps for an extended period of time, and then to a life without her anchor.
We have both signed up for therapy, and it does not surprise me that we have been paired up with professionals of different expertise, and advised to stay apart unless there is a particular issue we feel we can address together. My wife’s therapy will initially focus on the caring aspect, which seems to make sense.
The caring aspect became more real this week after a further two night stay in hospital, this time for an operation to remove as much of the tumour as safely possible, with radiotherapy likely to start next month. This was a larger, longer operation with a longer expected recovery time, not least because I am told that two seizures occurred during the procedure. The main issue that arose were additional visual symptoms, something else the surgeon warned was likely. The original visual field symptom seems to be a bit better, but I am experiencing frequent double vision and some apparitions like a curtain or various cars in the sky. It is very disconcerting. Apparently in some cases it goes away again fairly quickly but in other cases can linger. If it stays it will take some getting used to. In better news, I have found myself able to read quite competently over the last couple of days. But one way or another I might need a bit of help with some tasks and emotional support in the coming days, and I have certainly been quite tearful, for the first time in a while. So I am grateful that my wife is so determined to rise to the task at hand, though the last thing I wish is to burden her.
The journey to different destinations is somehow universal in life partnerships. We vow to travel together until death do us part, and most of us envisage an end literally together. But life has other plans, and usually somebody has to go first, on occasion at a time when the survivor is still quite young and healthy.
Most of us resist conversations about how we would cope if widowed and what we would wish for our surviving partner if and when that happens. Perhaps this is a lost opportunity. What seems to happen a lot in long and happy marriages to old age is that when one partner dies the other tends to lose some will to live and follows behind quite quickly. That way many productive final acts may be lost. I am sure I am not alone in fervently wishing that my wife can recreate a fruitful life in the time she might well have if the cancer kills me at some point, whether in months or, as we hope, years.
I can wish this. To an extent I can help her frame it and plan for it, as indeed we started as soon as we received the diagnosis. We have taken steps financially and been quite practical about it, and I hope that continues.
I fear though that there is a trap lying here, represented by a desire to micro-manage from beyond the grave. A lot is written and shared about legacies and final wishes, but in the end our job is to prepare the ground, leave plenty of space, and get out of the way. The survivor is probably not doing themselves any favours by building shrines and memorials either. Life is for living.
So my favourite management advice about getting out of the way may apply to grieving the end of a happy marriage as well. And I can also argue that it applies just as much to another critical life task for most of us, that of parenthood. Our job as parents is to give our child a solid start loaded with skills and hope and optimism and love. We all fall into the trap of micro-managing our children, such is our desire to protect them and to make them happy, but there comes a point, earlier than most of us care to accept, that getting out of the way is a smarter plan. One of the things which affords me the most acceptance of the situation I now face is the belief that as parents we have successfully passed this important milestone with all three of our children.
The coming weeks, months and maybe years will give us practical experience of a shared journey to different destinations. I hope we can manage it with love, care and gratitude, right until the moment of separation. No doubt there will be mistakes along the way, including denial, lack of acceptance, micro-managing and shrine- building. None of this is easy, which is no doubt why we avoid the topics involved so readily. But I believe we owe it to each other as acts of love to do some preparation for what is almost inevitable. Some live longer than others. We can celebrate what we have had and what we can still have, without sliding into unhealthy places. I pray that this time will be given to us and that we both use it wisely. I believe we have made a strong start, but accept that this shared journey to different destinations will surely be tough at times.
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