We Own the Sky(51)
Her last visit to the forum was 2012. Her signature at the end of each post read: Clinical trial Oct ’12, Damon joined the angels 23/12/2012
I clicked on a few more profiles. None of the posters on the thread had visited the forum since late 2012. Their children were all gone.
14
There was a moment when I woke. A second, a millisecond, or perhaps less. In that fuggy world between worlds, it was just another morning, of sunshine and school, of late breakfasts and happy squabbles. And then I remembered and I wished I could go back, to wake once again, because even that miniscule fraction of a second, that half breath, that flicker of the eye, felt like paradise.
Anna was still asleep, her breathing deep and regular, so I reached for my phone and opened Hope’s Place.
Re: Can anyone help us?
by SRCcaregiver? Fri Nov 7, 2014 1:20 am
Hello Rob so sorry to hear about your situation. My daughter had a similar diagnosis and it hit her very hard. Hers spread so quickly that hospice was the only response in the end. Cancer is a terrible disease ill be praying for you...
Re: Can anyone help us?
by Camilla? Fri Nov 7, 2014 1:58 am
I am very sorry to hear about Jack’s diagnosis. You are very welcome here and will find lots of support. We never know when or where the finish line is, so please just love the journey.
Re: Can anyone help us?
by LightAboveUs? Fri Nov 7, 2014 7:30 am
Holding you in prayers Rob. You might not like to hear this right now but you have to focus on the time you have left. Cancer really can be a gift. It has allowed me to appreciate what is important in life and taught my family how to live. My daughter lived for much longer than anyone thought possible and she made the most of her time. I will be praying for you on your journey. Much love.
Was that it? The consensus? That we were to enjoy the time that we had left with Jack? That we were to celebrate every sunrise, every dew-dappled morning? Because Jack was a “survivor” now, on a “journey.” Oh, how I had already come to hate those words.
*
It was evening, Jack had gone to bed, and Anna was reading in the living room, her legs over one arm of the chair, a glass of wine in her hand. I watched her as she read. There was a small mole on the side of her cheek, which she’d had since she was a girl. A hair was now growing in its center. At first I thought she hadn’t noticed, that she had simply been preoccupied with everything, but the hair had now started to curl, growing to the length of a fingertip.
If, before, you had said to me: imagine yourself in this situation. How would you react? How would you spend each day when you have been told your child is going to die? I didn’t know what I would have said. Perhaps I would have imagined long evenings of tears, of beating our fists on our chests, of begging, cursing God on our knees, and praying, praying, praying for a miracle.
It wasn’t like that. It was the mundanity of it all that crushed me. The way that things that once glittered were now rotten, steeped in tarry grief. I could not watch Jack pushing his fish fingers around on his plate or see him mouthing along to Peppa Pig without feeling an inordinate sense of loss.
It was the little things, always the little things. Seeing food in the freezer that I had made when Jack was healthy. My antivirus program asking if it should run a full-system scan, because who cared if I had a computer virus now. Sullen old people in the street, scowling as they lugged their tartan grandma carts up the hill. Did they not realize what they had? The luxury of old age.
Anna had taken leave from work and Jack was off school, and we waited on
him, played board games, made endless rounds of cheese on toast. Surely, surely, there was more than this? Fish fingers and Peppa Pig. Shark in the Park.
Marathon sessions of Guess Who and Hungry Hippos. Shouldn’t we be doing
something, anything, not this?
As I opened the laptop, there were some tabs open in the browser, one of them a Google results page. The string was still in the search box: “How do you tell a six-year-old he is dying.”
I read it out loud, almost without thinking, and Anna glanced up from her book, a puzzled look on her face.
“Your search.”
“Right,” she said.
“So is that what you think we should do?” I said softly. “Tell him he’s dying.”
“I don’t know, Rob, that’s why I was Googling it.”
I tapped my fingers on the arm of the sofa. Could she not even discuss it with me? Sometimes she was so infuriatingly straightforward about everything. “I don’t think we should tell him anything,” I said, “especially when we don’t know anything for certain. There are still options. We can’t just give up on him.”
“We’re not giving up on him, Rob,” Anna said, turning her body away from
me. “But we have to face reality. And you keep talking about options, but what options are there?”
“Well, there are cancer clinics all around the world, places I’ve been reading about. And then there’s the trial Dr. Flanagan mentioned...”