Filter

I view this blog as my cancer journal. Since it is shared there is a light filter which in turn makes me self-conscious at times about what I want to say. It makes me think about whether or not I'm being too repetitive or if what I want to say is going to affect someone else.

There are days when I care less about the filter and I think what I have to say reflects such. There are other days when I choose to write about something entirely different than what is really on my mind because of the filter. The reality though is that this is my place to choose what I want to talk about and when. My readers get to choose if they want to listen. I see it as a win-win.

In the real world we all know that it isn't this easy. People ask us all the time how we're doing. How I respond reflects how I really feel, but it is usually sugar-coated. I think Geoff pretty much does the same thing, except when people ask how he is doing.

I've watched him. He doesn't really know how to respond. He has a long pause and then tries to say something about being tired, but doing ok. He knows people care, but he also knows that most people don't want to know that he is "cooked." He just has a harder time hiding it.

He doesn't want to tell me because he thinks I have enough to deal with. I know it though and he knows I know. I try to do things to make his day easier and he responds by doing the same for me. We both stay up too late trying to lighten the load for the other one.

I'm constantly nagging him to get more sleep. He acknowledges me, but we both know that there is a finite number of things we have to get done each day and neither one of us can manage it all right now.

And this is how it begins...We talk. We talk all the time. But there are so many things that go unsaid between us. Things that neither of us want to say or talk about.

I finished a school project this afternoon so we planned to have a couch potato night. Ephraim used the potty all day so he and I had a deal that he could watch the Polar Express on one of our laptops while Geoff and I watched what we wanted from DVR on our tv.

After seeing footage of Sandy on the computer and on tv we both were wishing we could do more to help and overwhelmed by the intensity of it all. It was definitely a comedy night. At the end of the night we decided to finish up a show that we had watched part of the other night. It's a British show that is on PBS. It's really more of a mini-series that takes places in 1950's England.

One of the story-lines this week involved an older couple dealing with terminal cancer. We forgot about this when we decided to finish up the episode. Both of the couple were trying to protect the other one from the inevitable pain. When the man finally died we both looked at each other through our tears.

Ok, first of all...Geoff doesn't normally cry watching tv. Second of all, the story-line was sad, but really neither of us was that invested in it. Third of all, I'm not going to die!!! (you hear that cancer?!?!?). We know this, but we also don't talk about what if I did.

There have been times where I've said "if anything DOES happen to me, tell so-and-so this...or make sure the kids learn this..." We had one fall-apart conversation very early on when Geoff told me I have to live to go New Zealand with him and that he promises to get me a goat (eventually)...There was more, but you get the point.


It seems like ages since that conversation and I guess we were due. There were words tonight too, but not many. It was just more of us both acknowledging our emotions and our fears that we normally try to filter out. It didn't last long before Ella was demanding our attention and we were reassuring each other that everything is going to be just fine. Next thing you know we were swooping the kids off to bed and trying to finish up with our approximately 1 million things we need to do before we go to bed each night.

In reality I will be fine and we will be fine. We are fine. Geoff admits that he is "cooked" and I would agree. At the same time, we'll pull through it all and tonight we'll go to bed and just snuggle up a little closer and tighter.

Cancer chain quote of the day:

"Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway." -Mary C. Crowley