A few days ago my ex-boyfriend Jon, who some will recall as The Sweet Boy, was diagnosed with an aggressive tumor. It's in his right forearm, and is roughly the size of a softball, perhaps larger. That arm is the one that was most affected by his motorcycle accident, and is held together with titanium rods and enough plates and screws to put together an IKEA table. His doctors have said for years that he will someday lose the arm--the circulation is so poor, and if they were to amputate it, he could get a prosethetic--but he's stubbornly refused discussion of it. I understand that, understand now why he says that he doesn't think they'll take the arm. Understand his stubborn insistence that all will be well, that maybe even taking out the tumor will improve things, make his arm work better, "free up" the dead nerves.
We've talked about the possibility of me being there with him, though I don't think that's physically feasible, as the surgery will take place in Seattle and I have kids, a job, a life that must keep going here. Beyond that, I cannot be that person for him anymore. I am not that person now. I am not the girlfriend, not the wife. But when he told me over the phone, told me of the diagnosis, I wanted nothing more than to be there, for a few moments.
Then, after we hung up, I set down the phone and cried. I remembered, weirdly, my dad and the sickness that enveloped our house for years, quietly, crept in through medical forms and subtle changes: the handfuls of vitamins, pamphlets collecting dust with magazines on the coffee table. My dad had Hepatitus C, had it for two decades before anyone even knew it existed, was a lost cause from the moment of diagnosis in 1991.
It's been nearly ten years since my dad died and I always think, rather stupidly, that I'm over it. I don't cry at the normal milestones or miss him at holidays. But the triggers are there, buried, in places I hardly suspect. When I was taking my MFA exams, I thought of him one night as I was typing. I remembered, out of the blue, when he was studying for his bar exams in Sacramento, head over a book on Torts, muttering to himself and taking notes. I remembered him telling me then, "someday you'll have to study this hard. And you'll miss it when it's over."
I was typing my exam at Jon's house when I remembered this, sitting in his dining room, books spread over his table, lap top in front of me, the cup of tea he had made me cooling. I closed my computer, laid my head across it and cried.
So when Jon told me about the tumor, I thought suddenly of my father in the ICU in Bakersfield. His liver was failing and he wasn't quite conscious, was angry, I recall, because we couldn't give him any water and he was so thirsty. But there was something about the medicine they were giving him, trying to reverse some damage, some reason he couldn't have the water, and I can't even remember now, thinking of the doctors and their faces and voices, they are all putty and static, all I can recall is swabbing his lips, apologizing that I couldn't give him anything more. His skin was yellow, everything was yellow, when he opened his eyes, the whites were milky-yellow, and my mind played a game I couldn't stop: yellow like sunflowers, like dried leaves, like agua fresca in the mercados.
The past few weeks have been rough. I am behind on bills, terribly behind, afraid of how behind I am. I am worried about the kids. Thing Three's ear infection is back, I called off on work again yesterday, and am worried and guilty about that. And I was struck with how much I miss seeing them, the kids, when Thing Three and I curled up on the couch and watched a movie together. I chatted with friends--Friend One, Huckleberry--yesterday while she took a long, much needed nap, and I bickered with both of them. I want guarantees against loss, and neither of them, in their own ways, can give me that. No one can. I am three kinds of sad and two kinds of crazy, and I hate feeling needed and not being able, emotionally, physically, to answer. The night before my dad died, I remember sitting in his hospital room. He wasn't fully conscious but was trying to talk. All he could manage was my name, my brothers' names. I knew he was still thirsty, his lips cracked yellow. I walked from one end of the room to the other. I called the nurses, asked for more swabs, a new heating pad, anything to ease his pain. I couldn't fix anything. I couldn't do anything, and it was awful, a terrible feeling, as though all the love I had for him meant nothing if I couldn't pour it into a cup and help him drink.
*tm
