It's the middle of the week, and things couldn't be going slower. I've got less than three hours left at the office, and it seems like it took forever to get to this very moment...
As I typed the above statement, everything started happening at once. It is now 3:00, and I have an hour left here. In the past two hours, I have helped a patient apply for assistance through two different foundations, started rudimentary plans for starting a food pantry for the patients in our branch office, tried to get prescription authorizations: the usual.
But perhaps the most important thing I did today was listen to a patient's spouse fret over her husband's rapid deterioration. He has cancer, and he now weighs less than his own father did when he succumbed to it. She says he can barely stand now, let alone walk. Her tears are stubborn, like her, but they are there, hovering, waiting.
I look at him and see his mouth scrunched up, the lips curling inwards towards his mouth, as if he is in a perpetual scowl, or waiting for his insides to swallow him up out of existence. He sees my gaze and manages to eke out a small smile. I know it's a smile, because the twinkle in his eyes, although duller, is still there.
Their savings are dwindling; she spends hundreds a month on food, because his appetite fluctuates so greatly that whenever he has a craving for any food at all, she rushes to take advantage of those rare moments. She tells me how she could win an Oscar with the performance she puts up for him. She tries not to let the worry and fear show through on her face, especially when what he puts in his body won't stay there for very long, and he slowly fades.
Moment by moment, he disappears, and disappears, and disappears. She says it's not a matter of how anymore, but when, and she doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed when the next day comes, then the next, then the next.
This sturdy woman, shorter than I, forever clad in muumuus of varying purple shades, always bringing the staff Thank You cards, little deli trays, boxes of candy in gratitude, summarizes her life with her husband: a mix of anticipation and dread, hope and despair, everything and nothing. Their whole life together is no longer defined by who they were when they married, who they grew into when they raised children, or who they became in their careers. Their life is now defined by phone calls to case managers, scheduling scans and appointments, budgeting to afford prescriptions, gas, life. It's about calling the immediate family together to reminisce, to say goodbye without using the actual words. Their life is now about preparing for a future together, different than what they'd planned for before... dreading the time they know will come.
Then, a future apart... A future without each other.
A future alone.
I look at her. I can't see her without seeing him, and can't think of him without thinking of her. That day will come when I won't see him anymore. I may see her once or twice after that. Soon I won't see her, either.
After talking with her, and watching her struggle to keep a stoic face, and him struggle to, for her sake, pretend he doesn't see her struggle, it seems ridiculous for me to complain about time creeping by. It's trivial to complain about far away parking spaces, encounters with people who do stupid things, running out of diet root beer in the break room fridge. It serves no purpose, really, to get bent out of shape over something said by a loved one in a tone you don't quite grasp, or to worry, worry, worry about tomorrow, next week, next year. All that energy wasted, when it could be used to appreciate right now.
None of it makes sense, and it all makes complete sense.
I've spent the last hour typing this, and now it's time for me to clock out. I know I should probably end this post by tying things together, completing a theme, making it neat. But I can't worry about making it pretty, or comprehensible, or even the least bit good.
I'm just going to leave it as it is, go see Ben, get wrapped inside his arms, tell him I love him, and not think about anything but that. Tomorrow can wait.
Isn't that the point, after all?
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