The Wood Stove and the Wartime Nurse

Feb 19

How I coped or didn't cope with my partner's terminal illness

We lounged in the glow of the wood stove. The room radiated warmth and cocooned us from the relentless snowfall outside. It was just an ordinary New England scene likely repeated over and over, house by house, town by town. (Except perhaps at Rob Gronkowski's house. God only knows what happens there).

This storm wasn't a sassy Nor'easter or a hurricane like menopausal Sandy (like, what's her problem?). Not hell-bent on property damage, it was just a good old-fashioned snowstorm—the kind that softens edges and erases cracks. Sit down, grandma. The Packy is closed.

On this kind of day, I imagined Emily Dickinson, deep in the wilds of Western Mass, wrote It sifts from Leaden Sieves.

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -

It powders all the Wood.

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road

Both Christian and his kids were focused on an oversized TV with a supersized volume. The backs of their heads were haloed in soft fire light, while artificial light stole the color from their faces. On the screen, a toothy animated snowman yodeled deep throaty pitches that built up to falsetto and shot back down the register in waves—over and over.

Painful.

No one in the room spoke, just watched. The silence said everything.

I turned toward the fire but couldn't bring myself to look at it. I was working so hard to push down the fear that was threatening to wrap its tentacles around my heart and pull me into a dark abyss. When I shooed one tentacle away, another, stronger one would replace it.

So many times before this night, the wood stove had brought me a soft and melty peace. I would add a log and visualize a worry crackling and sometimes popping, depending on the juiciness of the worry, and then burning away to ash. And well, the wine may have helped, too.

On this night, I felt betrayed by everything and everyone, including God, the universe, and this wood stove. Especially this wood stove, my solace on the dark, cold nights that New England guarantees from October to May. Sometimes, it even throws in June when it's feeling a little naughty.

That night, I could only gaze directly at the miniature flames reflecting in the bowl of my wine glass. If I could slip inside the little fire in my glass, the larger world would disappear, like sharing a ski lodge fireplace pic on Instagram, creating a faux magical life. #Blessed.

If I reduced the aperture size through which I view my life, my life would be magical, too. "Look at me; I have this perfect little fire in my wine glass." #YOLO.

My hand grazed the faux fur blanket covering my knees, and I pulled it closer to my chest. I wanted to pull its softness inside my body to fill the places where heartbreak was beginning to open fissures. Like filling the wrinkles of the road with alabaster wool. Except I felt more like a volcano venting steam before a catastrophic eruption. Anger coursed through my veins like rivulets of molten lava.

The randomness and unfairness of his diagnosis overwhelmed me. I sank deeper in my chair and thought that there is nothing in life that is dependable, safe, or sacred. We are all just specks of space dust spinning around on a planet that was little more than a bus without a driver careening down an icy highway in the dark. Permanently out of control, with only ruin in its headlights.

I feared that a scream would begin to release from the center of my core, burst through the fissures, and explode so violently into the room that the wood stove would bow to its master and the televised snowman would be blasted into a cold, dead silence (I was okay with the latter).

We were in between courses of chemo, and for months, the only emotion I had allowed myself to feel was hope. There was no room for pain, fear, or sadness. If we got bad news from a doctor, I only allowed hope. I thought that if I gave into any of the darker emotions, the cancer would win. It would grasp us in its dark maw and drag us down in an inescapable hellscape that only Dante could describe. Or maybe Elon Musk. He seems like he knows.

Inwardly, I was traveling through the nine circles of hell, but outwardly, I embodied the stiff upper lip of a motivational wartime poster. I was John Hurt's character in Spaceballs, but instead of an alien bursting from my stomach, it was a bustling WWII-era British nurse ordering the kids not to "fret" and declaring, "Britain will not burn!" While scrubbing pots, she'd dole out spoonfuls of molasses (for the iron) to the children and maybe even the pets. I clung to this persona, believing it could get us through anything. After all, people manage hard things all the time, right? Britain won wars with a stiff upper lip, and so would I.

Christian wanted it this way. Afraid of pitying looks from parents at soccer games, he told few people of his diagnosis. For Christian, life was lived through a series of silly dances, flashes of a grin that always met his eyes, records that played too loud, and kids who ran barefoot outside with flashlights in the dark.

He wanted to dissociate and had the right girl to help with that. I was born into an alcoholic family. If pushing your feelings down and focusing on making other people comfortable was a sport, I was the reigning champion.

But at this moment, I had my tiny magical wine glass fire and told the nurse she was needed elsewhere. Without the nurse to order me darn socks or make a pie from the week's leftovers, I allowed myself to raise my phone towards my face, open a web browser, and search "Glioblastoma." The Google served up a medical drawing of a man who held his brow in severe pain while a section of his skull had been removed, ostensibly so that onlookers from the internet could get a better view to see what had caused this brow-clutching pain. I saw the cause, and it was terrifying. A tumor the size of a golf ball with alien tendrils undulating into the brain animated the screen (and my dreams ever since).

I looked away. It was too dreadful to take in all at once. My pulse quickened. I searched for comfort. I looked at my little wine glass fire, the rug, the dog, the kids, my love, and even that goddamn snowman. And then slowly, I brought my gaze back up to my phone screen. I took a deep breath, and a caption screamed out from the bottom edge of the image: "Glioblastoma has a less than 1% survival rate."

I knew this. The doctor with his white coat, Jerry Garcia tie, and brown Oxford shoes had said something similar, but at the time he said this terrible thing, I had stopped listening. I was looking into Christian's eyes as we communicated "no" back and forth.

I had let the fire go out, and the darkness beckoned. I wanted to obliviate this day, this season, with wine and whatever else I could find.

But the words of another New England poet came to mind,

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

I put my phone down and told the nurse to return from her break. There must be a pot to scrub.