Tag Archives: Maeve

Our Plan B Life

Home for a Rest

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In the months after Brock died, when I was busy packing up our stuff to move to Invermere, I wondered if I was missing my opportunity to grieve. I was worried that I would reach Invermere and settle in here to our new (Plan B) life, and be so busy finding us a house and making friends and re-creating Isaac’s active lifestyle that I would just move on to the post-Brock chapter of our life, without ever properly working through the trauma and sadness of losing him.

Instead, I am relieved to find that the numbness I’ve felt since September 21 is finally thawing.

I think I can finally be sad because I’m no longer trying to put on a brave face for the people around me. In Duncan, I was mourning along with Brock’s friends and family, as well as his childhood teachers, fellow volunteers, once-colleagues, farm customers, etc. I can’t help myself — I’ve always needed to “silver-line” other people’s negative emotions, for some reason (I think I just made up a new verb, but that’s the best word I can think of). And so when someone expressed sympathy for me I would (usually) automatically try to comfort them or downplay my own grief.

Many people here in small-town Invermere know about Brock’s death, and have given me their hugs and condolences, but they didn’t know Brock. I can just be sad and accept their sympathy without feeling the need to comfort them.

I’m also finally in a situation where I don’t have to be strong for Isaac. He happily spends entire days away from me, with my sister and mom. I don’t have to be “on” all the time for him.

I read an essay in The Walrus the other day, written by a man (Paul Adams) who lost his wife to cancer four years after her diagnosis. They’d accepted it was terminal, too. He wrote this articulate bit:

“We all come to cancer with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual resources we have, and we use them up. We use them all up.”

I think my friend Maeve was right: I am exhausted. I gave everything I had these past few years. My head has felt full of cotton for months. I remember being a “high-functioning” (as Ryan would say) person, able to multi-task and tackle errands efficiently. I hope that I will be that clear-headed again someday. But these days I am barely a safe driver. In Invermere I have the excuse of being out-of-practice driving on snow and ice, and usually relinquish the wheel of my car to whomever else I’m traveling with. But it’s not just the big horn sheep and black ice that make me unsafe. I can’t maintain focus. I often awake from little “black out” moments of distraction.

I am learning that grief is like sailing through an ocean of icebergs. It isn’t one single thought or memory that makes me sad. There are dozens of things to grieve. I relive Brock’s last four days, including the moment when he stopped breathing and died. I remember our conversations, how funny and unexpected he could be. I mourn the loss of our farm, and Brock’s energy. I think about the future we wanted and should have had. Brock should be here teaching Isaac to skate and ski. Brock should be binge-watching season 2 of The Crown with me until 1am.

It’s bizarre that I’m finally able to be sad here, when otherwise I feel so at home, and happy to be back in the East Kootenays.

There is a bereavement support group in Invermere and I’ve signed up for the next session, which should start at the end of January. A family friend, who lost his wife this year, is halfway through the last session and he says there is a workbook. I love that there’s a workbook. Because it’s work, and because we humans are all so essentially the same, and because a workbook has a start and an end, with steps to follow, and that seems healthier than just sitting around with other grieving people, talking about how sad we are, with no path forward.

A 2053 Perspective

A mental exercise that intrigues me these days … I wonder how Isaac will tell the story of his life when he’s an adult. Say, 40 years old. “My dad died of cancer, and then we moved to Invermere, and my mom …”

What did I do next? Did I make good choices? Were we financially okay? Did we stay cuddle-close or drift apart as he approached his teen years? Was I a good role model and support to Isaac for dealing with his dad’s death? What will he remember, and what will scar him?

It’s mind-bending to see our present reality through that big-picture lens. It’s weird to be the “widowed, single mom” in someone else’s life story.

Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

A Stoic Response to Loss

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Sometime after Isaac was born in 2013, I lost my sense of smell. Or maybe it happened while I was pregnant. My relationship with food roller-coasted dramatically during those 34.5 weeks: I was constantly queasy for the first three months, to such an extent that I couldn’t even walk through a grocery store without feeling sick. I was grateful that we lived on a farm, our closest neighbours hundreds of feet away, because I could wander over to an isolated corner of our property and try to breathe in enough fresh air to fight down the nausea, or vomit in the privacy of the scrub trees.

Then, around the three month mark, the switch suddenly flipped and I loved food again. It was a distinct moment, as I entered a grocery store in Cobble Hill, and I almost cried with relief (and pregnancy hormones). Suddenly the shelves of food called out to me. I remembered how good my favourite foods smelled and tasted, and I filled my shopping cart with everything I hadn’t been able to stomach since the start of my pregnancy.

And then, around this time or within the next year, my nose stopped working.

I wondered how it was that others were able to notice Isaac needed a diaper change. I couldn’t smell anything. I learned to pat his bum constantly, to check whether he needed a dry diaper.

Family rhapsodized over the scent of a newborn, but I thought they were just being weird and this was another of those “romanticizing parenthood” delusions.

Visiting friends commented on the manure-y air when a farmer neighbour fertilized their pasture. I never noticed the smell, but thought I’d just become acclimatized.

Brock paced the house, hunting down a rank can of garbage or bag of compost, unable to sleep. I teased him for his overly sensitive nose.

Finally I realized I was no longer smelling freshly-cut grass, or my cups of green tea, or the lemon filling of my pies — my three favourite smells.

I asked my (award-winning) family doctor about my missing sense, and he said it was probably a stress thing, what with the pre-eclampsia/premature birth and Brock’s cancer and all. He had a point: my life has been a soap opera.

And then I realized that I couldn’t taste anything either. Maeve tested me: she put some oil of oregano drops in my mouth. Apparently oil of oregano tastes revolting and smells worse. I only experienced the sensation of it going down my throat. It was hot and my eyes watered, but I couldn’t smell or taste anything.

There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about my missing senses, so I’m learning to appreciate this new way of experiencing the world.

A family friend sent me a spectacular bouquet of stargazer lilies when Brock died. I remember how these flowers are supposed to smell, and I can’t experience that right now, but I am floored by how beautiful they are. I spend a lot of time studying the blossoms, all the variations of pink and white and the interesting textures on the petals.

Last week I joined a long table of family at the Old Firehouse Wine Bar for Old Fashioneds (Brock’s favourite drink) and ordered the meat & cheese & bread plate: the bread was drizzled with truffle oil and sprinkled with rock salt. The bread was amazing. I think I could taste the salt (or at least experience how it felt in my mouth), and I loved the textures of the bread and cheese. Jeff made me non-alcoholic drinks of various colours (and, presumably, flavours), and I felt the tonic water fizz down my throat.

I like to conduct little experiments to test my senses. Today I composted three-day-old crab shells (from a farewell feast when my visiting sister left for home) and sniffed mightily, trying to smell what I’m pretty sure must have been a horrible, strong stench. I could smell a little bit of sea creature-ness, but nothing unpleasant.

I still stop and sniff every flower I find, mostly to be a good role model to Isaac.

I’ve been writing all of this out as it comes to me, trying to articulate my experience, and now I see all kinds of metaphors in my sensory loss.

I discovered Stoicism (the ancient Greek philosophy of life) while listening to an Ideas interview on CBC Radio, while driving home from the Sidney Farmers Market in 2010-ish. The interviewee, William B. Irvine, had written a book called A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I don’t know which came first — my Stoic approach to life, or my discovering Stoicism and striving to adopt its approach. All I know is that friends and family often comment on how I’m able to remain happy (and how Brock was able to be happy) despite the life challenges we’ve faced. Stoicism — and, specifically, Irvine’s Guide to the Good Life — articulates how I deal proactively and reactively to stress.

One main tenet of Stoicism is to recognize what we don’t have control over (e.g. cancer) and instead focus on what we do have control over (e.g. our quality of life). We couldn’t cure Brock, but we could make his final years, months and days extraordinary, by road-tripping across Canada and hosting election parties. Instead of weeping over Brock as he died, we watched Lord of the Rings as a family and karaoked “Mr. Jones.”

I lost my ability to smell or taste. I had a difficult pregnancy, almost died from eclampsia, and then became mom to a premature, underweight baby. My 38-year-old husband just died after living with cancer for three years.

But I smile most of the time, had a good laugh with my dad this morning, and continue to water a vase of stargazer lilies with the hope of seeing more blossoms.