An Atypical Summer
When life has different plans for you than sun and smiles
It wasn’t going to be any sort of good summer whatsoever, so your daughter decides it wouldn’t be a summer at all. Much better than still trying for it and failing.
No, it would be nothing. Time passing and then you wake up and it’s the end of August and you think, “Where did summer go?” But you won’t actually have to ask yourself because you know.
In fact, the more you think about it, this moment right now is a better summer moment than your daughter will actually have. She is sitting in her pajamas on a roof in Florida with her phone and it is a lovely morning. Even though she is crouched in a corner so nobody can hear her talking.
Because nobody on a vacation in April wants to start thinking about cancer.
And it will be okay but then she cries and her mother on the other end seems so far away.
And then it is June and the treatments start five days a week. And they say at first it won’t be so bad but then it will be later. And there is a gong in the hospital the people ring when their treatments are all done and you hope you even make it until you can ring the gong.
Because sometimes the treatments themselves kill people, like your friend who died six months ago and you still miss her so much. Or the man they took away in an ambulance right in the middle of his treatment, with his wife frantically telling the valet she needed her car right now, right now, so she could follow behind.
And your daughter drives there six hours to help and puts on a brave face for you, the parents. And she drives back six hours and put on a fun face for them, her children.
And she will do this all summer and she doesn’t even care because she loves you. Now you are not here or there you are just in between, and in the hospital in the cancer ward where it is freezing cold to help keep away the germs.
And you begin to bring a huge sweatshirt to wear when you are in there. And a water bottle and headphones and your bobble head samurai statue, to focus on, while you picture slashing the cancer away from yourself. And your wife stuffs snacks into your bag when you aren’t looking so that maybe you will eat more than you have been recently. But the gluten-free cookies and the trail mix and the health bars, especially the health bars, ruin your appetite just because of their very existence.
This becomes your routine and you notice “oh, now I am one of those people with a routine for all of this,” but it mostly feels okay.
And when you walk out the hundred degree heat feels marvelous but the walk to the car is too short so you turn on the heat in the car and you think “I am riding in one hundred degree weather and I have the heat on in the car and I am still cold,” and you and your daughter are in fact both still cold but for different reasons. But don’t offer the knitted hats, thank you very much. Those are knitted by volunteers who feel sorry for the poor helpless patients and that is not you, so you do the laundry every night despite protests that you don’t have to do anything. And you think that yes, you do, you really need to do this laundry more than anyone knows.
This is the same reason you sometimes drive the car but also you drive it because that is safer. When you are the passenger it is stressful since your daughter is bad at merging and prone to distraction when you are correcting her about her driving. Sometimes you fall asleep on the car ride once the car is warm like a sauna and she drives without interruption, although she can hardly breathe and feels like passing out from the heat.
You go from the car to the apartment with its air conditioning set on low thank God. And you look at all the protein drinks and bone broths and medicine containers and the only thing that works is the oatmeal so thank God for the oatmeal even though it has to include the protein powder. And dinner takes two hours but it is still light when it’s over because it is near the solstice.
Only a certain amount of OxyContin per day but at least there is also the marijuana oil which causes uninhibited cursing-who would have thought? And things are enjoyable for a moment.
The hair loss is not as bad as you thought but the weight loss is worse and they threaten a feeding tube so that now it becomes all about calories but the only thing that works is the special honey with coffee and sometimes jello.
Around the corner from the hospital is a natural food store filled with aisles of promising health-laden items and there is always hope something will show up on the shelves that will taste good. So she buys something new each time and meets the owner, who gives you free things like tote bags that are really no help, but thank you for the gesture.
And your wife and her sister shop for clothes every other day and seem to be buying unnecessary numbers of shirts and dresses, as if they are buying for a whole cancer ward full of people instead of just for themselves. In truth they are trying to buy themselves a few moments of lightness, the kind that pervades most days but you don’t pay it attention until it suddenly recoils from you and you don’t know how to entice it back.
Sometimes you observe people having their summer and you study them curiously as if they are specimens from another world. That family has a blow up pink pool floaty in the back of their SUV. Perhaps they are heading to the beach. It is as though they are in a zoo behind a plexiglass window and you can attempt to imagine how life is for them but you know you aren’t really coming close to getting it right. But their world is the real world and you are floating in surreality and you are the one behind the glass window of your treatment room.
The clothing is too big now and one morning you try eggs but go back to oatmeal and one night you try shrimp but go back to miso soup. And there are too many little chlorophyll pills to take, why can’t they just make one larger one?
There is free water at the hospital and you learn how to wrap a latex glove around the bottom of the water bottle so it doesn’t slide off the tilted tray attached to your treatment chair. Everyone is very kind and the best nurse is the man who sings and jokes but he is not the best one at finding veins. And you mean it, the veins are small and nearly invisible and only the one woman can do it.
You cannot use cash at the little store because cash has germs. And please try not to touch anything that you don’t have to. And always use hand sanitizer when you happen to pass by a dispenser mounted to the wall.
When it is a busy day and all of the treatment sites are in use, you can’t stand the loud talking that the visitors often do. What is worse is if there are also televisions on. If you shove those foam earplugs in and then put on your headphones maybe that will help. You want to smash their televisions but it would require you to stand up, an amazing feat amid the wires and IV tubes. You would rather not try, since you already have to magically accomplish this multiple times per treatment just to go to the bathroom.
At home, all three of them wife sister daughter watch you at mealtime but they work hard to pretend they aren’t watching so it is sidelong glances and meaningful looks of worry to each other. You try to ignore it but sometimes you go into the bedroom because you need a bit of an intermission and you want to slam the door behind you but you manage to shut it softly instead.
You are too tired for the acupuncturist twice a week but you go because it is easier than protesting and because you don’t want your wife to cry, like she did that time you got angry at her for sneaking the wretched soy powder into the oatmeal.
And it goes on like this endlessly, week after week.
Yet then somehow it is August and you have a countdown for your last five treatments and you get to ring the gong and take a commemorative photo. People clap for you. You walk out into the humidity and you realize it is still summer after all.
