Just In Case There Was Any Doubt

Ezra's middle name is Harrington. It was his now-late great-grandmother's last name, and we chose it in her honor. Noah's middle name comes from my side of the family -- Corbin, the Latin version of Corbett. Though we found out this weekend at the memorial service that the actual last name Corbin appears a few branches up on the Harrington family tree as well. Huh.

We also discovered that while Ezra got the name, Noah got the genes. 

(Professional photos [I am sure you can tell which ones those are] by Kaileen Galhouse, Galhouse Photography)

Mommy, Read Me A Story About Death & Destruction

We're headed back to Pennsylvania AGAIN this weekend, travel exhaustion and desperate homebody desires to sit on the couch be damned.

Grandma's memorial service in on Sunday. We're taking the boys, since it's really not a "funeral" -- no viewing or casket or urn, just a family-and-friends gathering at her nursing home. My mother-in-law thinks their presence will be a welcome distraction for everybody, especially Grandma's remaining friends, who do always adore visiting grandchildren, no matter who they "belong" to.

(Of course, my mother-in-law also thought it was totally appropriate to take the boys to visit Grandma last week, when we were in New York, and she was officially on her deathbed -- a decision that, after Jason saw Grandma on Saturday, he was little upset about. Yes, it's a natural part of life and all but HE was so rattled and shaken by how sick and already dead she looked, and would have preferred our two- and five-year-old children being spared that particular sight. Or at the very least, being consulted ahead of time would have been nice.)

(Free babysitting! No such thing. There's always a price tag. Like say, your babysitters jumping the gun on the whole death discussion with your preschooler, and coming at it from a completely different point of view and religious philosophy than your own. Fantastic.) 

The kids know PopPop is sick. They know he's been sick for a long time now, and goes to the hospital a lot, but haven't really asked any questions about, say, whether he'll get better. Or what will happen if he doesn't.

And no, I haven't yet offered any answers to unasked questions. Because I am a big fat chicken.

Noah knows all the words related to death, like "dead" and "killed" and "BLASTED TO DEATH WITH MY LASER GUN PEW PEW PEW," but the concept exists only in the movie-and-video-game sense. Not real. Animated. Disney-Pixar montage-y. With plenty of respawn points when your health gets too low. 

Obviously, with this weekend looming ahead, it's time for us to sack up and have a talk with Noah. I don't think Great-Grandma's death will be a particularly affecting one for him (her dementia has been pretty profound for most of his life), but I know he needs a heads up about the hows and whys of the service and the sight of grieving adults.

So last night, we went to the bookstore. 

When Dinosaurs Die was recommended in the comments section 'round these parts at least a dozen times, after various entries about my dad's illness, and I swear I attempted to order it through Amazon at least two dozen times. But then I broke down and canceled the transaction at the last second, because I just wasn't ready for it myself. 

This time I was able to convince my brain that I was buying it because of Great-Grandma and only Great-Grandma. I know. I probably should have walked over to the Grown-Up Book Section for a Grown-Up Book About Grown-Up Coping Skills, but...eh. I have a Kindle. I'll look for something to download on there. Tomorrow. Next week. 

Anyway, SHOCKER OF SHOCKS, you guys were right. This was by far the best option on the shelf. It covers everything, but is laid out in a way that allows a parent of a younger child to decide just how much to read per page. I don't plan to read every word to Noah at five, but I probably would to Noah at say, eight or nine. Definitely one with a nice shelf life, so to speak. IF YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE. BOTH WITH "SHELF" and "LIFE" HA HA HA BOOK PUNS AND DEATH JOKES ARE UNCOMFORTABLE okay I'm done now.

(The afterlife discussion, if you're in the market for a book like this yourself [I'm sorry] and consider that a big wild card in the decision-making, is presented as: "No one knows for sure, but there are a lot of different ideas, and it's normal to have lots of questions." And then it encourages those questions to be directed at you, the parent, or a religious leader. Exactly the tone I personally was looking for.)

I picked up Lifetimes, too, just because I liked it. It's not as detailed as the dinosaur book, but is really limited to just explaining the fact that everything has a beginning and an end, and the middle part is living. It's very nature-focused (trees live hundreds of years, butterflies live only a few weeks) before it extends the concept to humans and our lifetimes, but certainly not hippy-new-age or anything. There's absolutely no discussion of the afterlife or even what happens to your body once you die, but it's a nice, matter-of-fact way to explain that death is simply part of how things are. 

Plus, a lot of the books about death were just painfully LONG. Thirty-plus pages. A hundred-plus words per page. This one is more your traditional picture-storybook length. Judge my kids' attention spans and my bedtime-story patience level all you want, but GAAAAAAHHHHH GET ON WITH IT, SUESS, IT'S 8 PM AND MAH SHOWS ARE ABOUT TO START, LET'S GET THESE MONKEYS TO BED ALREADY.

Ahem.

It was around this point that I picked up another book -- I don't remember the title, but it seemed like a kind of abstract take on the afterlife, describing heaven without being overtly religious, or even explicitly calling it heaven. I thought it might be a good option to have on hand if Noah brought up some of the stuff my in-laws talked to him about last week, but by the time I got to the fifth page I suddenly realized I was reading a book designed to help sick children come to terms with their OWN DEATH.

*strangled gurgled crying sound*

So! I decided it was officially Time To Back The Hell Away From The "Growing Up/Tough Issues" Shelf, Oh My God. 

Noah and Ezra were playing with trains, but I convinced them to join me on a bench and let me read them a story. 

I did not read either of the books I'd just picked out. I read this one instead:

We read it again last night before bed, and we laughed and laughed and laughed, because oh, that Pigeon. Will he EVER learn?

Tonight, we'll read one of the other books. Or maybe both. 

And then probably the Pigeon one again. 

Both Sides of It

Jason's grandma died yesterday. It was...not unexpected. It was also peaceful, and one of those instances where crappy platitudes about it "being her time" and "for the best, really" are actually, entirely true. She was very old and very sick -- dementia had long since robbed her of most of the memories of her life and the chance to forge a relationship with Noah and Ezra, her great-grandchildren, whom she was simply unable to recognize in any meaningful, connected way.

But. Still. 

I met her over 14 years ago. At that point, the dementia was simply the occasional moment of confusion or befuddlement, but on some visits it was clear that she was already mixing up our relationship, treating me like her grandchild and Jason like the interloping boyfriend. We'd sit together and hold hands and she'd tell me stories. She gave us both furious hugs and kisses when it was time for us to leave, making us promise we'd visit again soon, which of course we assured her we would. Of course!

I never had a grandmother like that. But then suddenly, I did. 

Jason got to visit with her one last time on Saturday, though she was already mostly gone, asleep in a peaceful morphine haze to block her pain while nature took its final course. I stayed behind with the boys, wanting to shield them from...well, I don't know. Life. Death. A final memory of her being "like that," as I try to remember beyond the last time I saw her, which was an awful thing to see, because she was in so much pain and our very presence seemed to unnerve and frighten her. I sensed it was probably our last visit, or very close to it, but I still gingerly kissed her cheek and said I'd see her again soon.

Yes, it was her time. And for the best, really. 

But. Oh, I will miss her. I will miss my Grandma. 

***

I saw my dad on Friday. We had a wonderfully long, easy talk together. He still laughs at my jokes and makes me laugh in return. I told him the baby's name and we decided that his middle name sounds pretty much perfect with it, so there you go. Noah and Ezra climbed in bed with him and posed for a series of truly terrible photos, since Noah kept kicking his legs up in front of his face while Ezra preferred to sit with his butt facing the camera. 

Before we left, Ezra begged him to do his PopPop trick -- this funny popping sound he can make with his cheek and pinkie finger, a trick that delighted me as a child and something that I've yet to see exactly replicated by anyone else I've met. Ezra laughed and demanded more, again, c'mon! and tried to mimic the finger-pop but couldn't quite manage it. 

It was just like any other visit with Nana and PopPop, except that PopPop doesn't get out of bed anymore. Eh, they don't care. That's where all the kitty cats hide, after all, and the big mirrored closet doors in the master bedroom make an awesome stage for preschooler dramatic performances, you know.

Jason thought he seemed really tired and pale. I thought he seemed just fine. I mean, considering.

***

Today, he's in the hospital again. Fever, ridiculously low platelet counts, lungs full of fluid. When he coughs, his throat bleeds. The blood and plasma transfusions no longer seem to be helping, but they're trying again. He spent the entire night in the emergency room, because the hospital was completely full. I'm waiting for a morning update to hear if he's been admitted or not, or whether he'll go home again...or not. 

This is not the chemo, the doctor said, because they usually blame the chemo, or a reaction to some other drug or procedure. This is the leukemia.

***

He's surprised us so many times before, of course, that I'm starting to expect good news now. Or...good-ish news. Not-terrible news. Just watch, he'll go home today, I bet, and will stubbornly insist on going back for more chemo in a week or two, because that's the plan, and the way it is. I'm starting to expect that the three-to-six months time frame we were given four months ago won't apply to us, somehow, just because. Those crappy mourning platitudes from the first part of this post don't fit, at all, and in fact make me feel kind of stabby and stomach-punchy at the very thought of someone saying them to me. 

Before I left on Friday I kissed him and said I'd see him again soon.

It still feels true. For now, I still believe it, every time. 

***

That was supposed to be the last sentence, right there, but my phone just lit up with a text message from my mom:

They're sending him home. 

See? I knew it. I was right. This time, I was still right. Okay. Okay. 

We Called Them Rinse & Spit Cups, Even Though We Never Did Either Of Those Things

This photo is for my sister, who is currently pacing a hospital waiting room while her daughter, my niece, undergoes emergency gallbladder surgery. You know, for kicks.

Yeah. It's kind of an inside joke. Which would ideally involve each and every one of those cups filled with shots of contraband Pinot Grigio. On Christmas morning. While huddled in the guest room under the guise of last-minute present wrapping. Which may or may not have actually happened. 

Anyway.

Between that and another week full of chemo treatments and bargain-basement platelet counts, I'm in a giddy sort of limbo where I don't feel particularly funny, nor do I feel capable of being all maudlin and introspective. I'm just sort of spent. Maybe I just need a drink. Or a hug. Or some kind of chocolate-y boozy drink that could be the equivalent of a hug. 

Come to think of it, those mini-sized Dixie cups seem like the perfect serving size for a pregnant woman to safely consume alcohol in moderation. Plus look! At the packaging! The cups have ARMS. I feel comforted already.

Meanwhile...

1) I am recapping Top Chef All-Stars this season at Mamapop. Unfortunately, several of my personal Top Chef All-Time Most Disliked Douchebags are back again. Fortunately, my hatred gives me strength. Delicious, bacon-foam-flavored strength.

2) New column up at The Stir, in which I pretty much guarantee myself an immediate whack in the face as the Quirky Behavior Pendulum swings back in the other direction and takes me out in the process. 

3) There's enough new advice columns up at AlphaMom to prevent you from making any stupid life choices, particularly ones involving being productive at work on a Friday afternoon. Heavens, no.

4) We have a winner in the Windows 7 phone giveaway thingie, and it's...Mrs. Q of Nuclear Momb! With apologies to those of you who tirelessly commented on that post each and every single day possible, Mrs. Q won with a single, solitary comment that she left without even realizing there was a giveaway involved in the first place. This tells me that during the next electrical storm, we should all either stand directly next to her...or as far away as possible. Definitely one of those two things. 

5) Once I accomplish a fifth thing, I will type it here. In the meantime, I'm going to eat the shit out of something unhealthy and high in butter content. Golf claps for me and thing number five!

Alive & Slobber-Coated

Isn't it crazy annoying when bloggers start a post with an apology for not posting? Like they automatically assume you EVEN NOTICED in the first place, and CARED in the second place, because they are self-absorbed egomaniacs who imagine that dozens of people are sitting at their computers terribly worried because they couldn't be bothered to sit down and grace the world with a few sparsely punctuated sentences? I know, right?

Anyway! I am very sorry for not posting there, for a few days. I went back up to Pennsylvania again, for about the millionth time, for a good old-fashioned terminal-illness-related family reunion with some of my siblings. Siblings I haven't seen in years. Like, before my children were born years. Family togetherness for the WIN. 

I kind of don't want to talk about it. I mean, it was fine. It was just strange and very...heavy with cancer. You know? I think I'll just post some pictures instead.

This is my brother's dog Jack. Jack is the dog for whom the phrase WHO'S A GOOD BOY? was invented. Because he is the best boy, yes he is, shnuffle shmoopy etc. Noah especially enjoyed riding him like a pony. 

I am not even slightly exaggerating. 

Jack is an incredibly patient Pillow Pet animal. Noah is now requesting that we get a "real dog." 

Ezra spent a lot of time in the closet playing peekaboo, but I think the poor little guy was mostly just trying to stay out of the Line Of Nonstop Doggy Kisses. The perils of life at tongue-level, unfortunately.

I took about 25 photos of the boys with their cousin. This is the closest I got to a "good one." There are six boy cousins/nephews/grandchildren in our family, and only one girl. (Who is now 22 years old and no longer amenable to pink frilly princess clothing or toys.) I cannot even tell you the amount of open, naked pressure my current fetus is under to break the streak. 

Speaking of that, my belly officially popped and rounded out during the car ride home from Pennsylvania on Sunday, which was not really comfy, what with my wardrobe choice of skinny jeans and all. I mean, I know that it's not the baby or anything...more like my intestines have been forced upward and outward to make room for things yet to come. Like limbs, I suppose. And another giant 95th percentile melon head. 

Anyway, I would have posted all of this yesterday, except there was Blogging-Excuse-You-Don't-Care-About number two, which is that I was supposed to have a big fancy sponsored post go up yesterday, but then...it didn't, for various Oh-My-God-There-Is-No-Way-Anybody-Cares-About-This reasons, and then I thought it would go up first thing this morning but I still haven't gotten the green light or the tracking codes or the logos or the pudding pops or whatever else it is I need. So I figured I'd rush in and post something else instead while I wait, thus pretty much guaran-goddamn-teeing that I will have to publish the other post FOURTEEN SECONDS after hitting publish on this one, because that is just how things like that work out.

(This scintillating look at the inner workings of corporate sponsored blogging is brought to you by the letter A, the number 4, and zombies.)

Time Enough

So. My dad has decided to go ahead with chemotherapy after all.

I don't agree with this. Nobody does, actually, except for one doctor who seems to put chemo on par with prescription-strength Tylenol. Take one! You'll feel better in no time! Giddy up, let's get this systemic invasion started! My mom called me yesterday from a pharmacy parking lot just so she could finally scream and cry out loud about it. Best case is maybe a year or two of remission before the cancer comes back. Because this kind of cancer always comes back. The more likely case is that the chemo will kill him, or make him so desperately sick that the extra time will be the opposite of good time. But he's changed his mind and. He. Wants. That. Time.

Which means it's probably time for me to stop talking about it for a little bit, because even though my opinion on the matter is probably something like this...

...I shall instead post the other photos of the mini-pre-birthday party we threw for the boys last weekend like this:

 

There were cakes! To tenderly caress!

 

Festive paper fire hazards!

 

The realization that omg, our shirts like, totally match!

 

Poses to throw!

 

Skepticism over zucchini-bread-presented-as-birthday-cake to overcome!

(Not pictured: an entire jar of Bourbon peaches.)

 

And presents!

 

As in: PRESENTSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!11!!!!ELEVENTY!

 

Toddlers to baffle!

 

And finally, a Poppy-approved costume change. 

Three to Six to Who the Hell Knows

We left later on Friday than we'd planned, as always, heading up to Pennsylvania in the thick of DC rush hour, hitting additional rush hours in Baltimore and Delaware and Philly all the way up, to a degree where the math of "rush HOUR" starts bending the space-time continuum and we basically sat in traffic for five solid hours, until 11 o'clock at night. We arrived at Jason's parents far too late to get over to visit mine, and I admit I was grateful for one last chance to steel my nerves before having to walk in and see my dad, now that we Knew, here in the After, the Suck. 

The first thing he said was that he'd read my posts. I'd emailed my mom and all but ordered her not to read them -- I didn't want to make her cry, but I needed to write what I needed to write, and I knew I'd end up with something different if I imagined them in the audience.

She completely ignored me, of course, and then promptly told my dad to read them. 

He loved them. He stood there, looking so thin and pale and bruised like a peach, praising my writing to the skies -- vocabulary! prose! flow! everything he spent 30 years trying to coax out of his high school students! At any other time in my life, I would have burst into hot ugly tears because that's all I've ever wanted to do since I was a tiny thing with my crayons: To be a writer and make my dad proud. 

On this day, though, I scrunched and contorted my face and felt some warmth juuuust behind my eyeballs, but I still could not cry. 

***

Later that day, I watched my mom cry. A lot. I hugged her and patted her back and stared up at random points on the ceiling. I watched my sister cry as she talked about a dream -- a ridiculous, meaningless dream -- where our dad expressed his completely fictional disappointment with her. I watched my mom cry again as my sister and I tried to convince her to hold off on putting the house on the market, as she heard me say the most awful thing out loud, because someone had to.

"Three to six months, Mom," I said as gently as I could. "Three to six MONTHS."

I didn't much like the idea of those three to six months being spent with a sign on the front yard, with strangers marching through the house and eyeballing medical equipment and oxygen tubing and perhaps even him, in bed, because how the hell can he get up and out every time a realtor wanted to stop by? I didn't like the idea of three to six months' worth of stress over low-ball offers and contingencies and inspections and contracts falling through, and then, even if everything works out...a move? To where? To what? How? Look at him. Look at how fast it's already happening. 

I felt mean and cold and hard. When it became clear that they were going to ignore our pleading and put the house on the market anyway, I got vaguely irritated and stomped off. But I still did not cry. 

***

Even later that same day, Jason and I volunteered to go get some carry-out for everybody. We drove to a restaurant and sat at the bar while we waited for the food and I rehashed everything over and over again. We drove back to my parents' house and I talked and talked and talked, arguing with no one in particular, because Jason had already agreed with me from the beginning but was just allowing me to ramble.

We pulled up to the house and I said it out loud for probably the 12th or 17th or 32nd time: "Three to six MONTHS."

But this time I only made it to the word "six" before I was wailing. I put my head down in my lap and cried and cried and cried.

***

Jason got sick the next day, with some kind of vicious acid reflux episode that wouldn't let him eat or sleep for rest of our visit. He still had a work-related obligation on Monday night involving a cocktail party and a baseball game at the Phillies' stadium. We went even though we both felt miserable, trying our best to put on a happy face. My mom had asked me to get my dad a blue Phillies shirt while we were there -- which required a Lord-of-the-Rings style quest to find, despite the fact that every other fan in the stadium seemed to be wearing one. 

Once we found the elusive blue shirt, I bought myself a Phillies hat to replace the one I lost when we moved. 

***

Yesterday -- the day we were planning to leave -- my dad had a doctor's appointment. The magical call from the lab never happened on Friday -- it turned out that in my parents' shock they had completely misheard the doctor and the full pathology results would take several days longer than that. 

My mom called me from the office parking lot, shrieking at the top of her lungs. 

"IT'S GOOD NEWS IT'S GOOD NEWS IT'S GOOD NEWS!"

She was beyond hysterical and I started shouting over her, begging her to get on with it and tell me. I felt my feet going numb. What good news could there possibly be? Was the doctor completely wrong? How could he be wrong? And if so, then what the hell is wrong with my dad?

My mom finally calmed down enough to say that the leukemia was not acute, it was chronic, and started rushing to assure me that this made "all the difference in the world" and it "wasn't a death sentence" and the doctor was telling them about how TONS of patients go on to live YEARS with this diagnosis. YEARS. Now, this was just their regular family doctor and they'd need to talk to the hematologist but still, Amy, STILL! Everything is going to be okay! This changed everything! EVERYTHING!

I sensed my mom was waiting for me to scream, to laugh, to give a triumphant whoop. Instead I went weirdly quiet and stared at the ceiling. I told her we'd be over once they got back from the doctor.

Jason started questioning me: How can this be that different? He still can't do chemo. He still can't do a bone marrow transplant. What treatment is there? Did they catch it earlier than they thought? It's still obviously coming on fast, and making him sicker, so...?

I shushed him and sat there for a minute trying to process everything. I felt like I'd been knocked off my axis, like it was Wednesday night all over again, only...worse? I felt...angry? 

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" I asked out loud.

How many times did we have to go through this? How many phone calls and car trips and well, THIS? How many times did I have to lose him, to grieve over him? To worry endlessly that The End would not be peaceful and quick, but painful and long? At what point is "more time" not actually better? When was this really and truly going to be over? 

"What the FUCK is wrong with me?" I asked again, to no one in particular. 

***

Part of what was wrong, thinking back, was that my brain was starting to already remember random Google nuggets I'd read about the chronic diagnosis. It would be one thing if they caught it early, or if he was younger, or if he was otherwise in better shape, health-wise. There would be some additional treatment options, some chance at the disease staying in a holding pattern for a decent length of time, of him BEING one of those "TONS" of patients who live for years. 

The doctor had still not told my parents what stage the cancer was actually at. On the way to their house I pulled up a few websites on my phone and quickly cursed my creepy photographic memory. At Stage III or IV, after anemia develops and other internal organs get involved, intensive chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant are pretty much your only options. My father has been anemic for a few months already. He had to be at least at Stage III.

The doctor told my parents something about getting his platelets and anemia back in check, making it sound -- at least to them, in their amped-up joy -- like fighting advancing leukemia required little more than an iron supplement, tra la la la laaaaa. 

The only difference I could really deduce between a chronic and acute diagnosis in my father's particular case was that while it would very likely kill him, it would just take a bit longer to do it. Or maybe it would let the chemo do it instead.

***

Jason had suggested outside that I try my best to keep my mouth shut and let the doctors talk with them, to let them enjoy this reprieve, and to pretend like I didn't know any better and was just as happy as they were. I promised to try.

***

When we arrived at my parents house I felt downright sick with knowledge. My mom came to the door with a huge smile on her face and her arms in the air, repeating her refrain about the GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS! 

I could see my dad standing in the hallway behind her, clapping his hands. 

***

I am a terrible liar. 

***

Noah amused himself with my phone during the trip home, completely draining the battery. So I didn't see my mom's text message until a few hours after she sent it.

doc called

aggressive

needs chemo

u were right

***

I am exhausted. I am angry. I need something to hit. Something to throw. Even though I never really believed that the switch in diagnosis meant anything...maybe I did. I know my parents did, which makes the whole farce seem so extra cruel and unfair. 

Their house is on the market. After being at peace with the no-chemo route on Monday, he seems to be changing his mind, despite the high risks, in a desperate bid for more time. My mom is terrified of chemo, terrified of no chemo. I would now give anything just to have been wrong about the whole thing.

Because now I can't stop crying. 

After the Fall

 

Thank you.

I...don't really know what to write next, but a formal Internet-wide thank-you note seems appropriate, for all of your lovely and kind comments, emails and tweets. Reading them felt like...well, like an actual physical hug and actual physical arms propping me up. 

Thanking each and every one of you personally would probably be the best thing to do, and a much better use of my time than what I've actually been doing. Which is...not much. A lot of staring into space. Watching cooking shows. Swiffering up our yearly mid-September ant infestation in the foyer because the wipe-out-the-colony-in-a-blaze-of-Jonestown-glory traps aren't working nearly fast enough for my liking. I've made significant progress through the box of Godiva chocolates Jason ran out to fetch me almost immediately after I got the news, but that's only because it fits so well into my established plan of sitting on the couch and staring into space.

 
 
The one thing I haven't been able to do yet is cry. Which is a weird feeling for me, because I cry over everything. TV shows, movies, commercials, any YouTube video involving a dog, news stories about the triumph of the human (and/or dog) spirit. But for the past 48 hours or so, I've been a STONE. I doubt evenSteel Magnolias (BUT MAH DAUGHTER CAAAAAN'T) or A Little Princess (PAPA! PAPAAAAA!) would trigger anything more than a snort of derision and a crack about the visible teeth marks all over the scenery. 

A friend of mine called yesterday after reading my post and she immediately burst into the tears that I was unable to shed, but oh, I was so grateful for her call and the sound of her voice. She let me ramble on and on for as long as I needed, though I realized I sounded oddly military in my list of Things That Of Concern: having to explain things to Noah, for one. Ezra's young age and lack of memories. Their house, my mother, hospice care -- all of which I rattled off like logistics from a a spreadsheet before brightly mentioning that Hey! I'm getting ahead of myself. Still need to wait and see what the lab results tell us, right? 

She paused, awkwardly, knowingly, and I suddenly realized what I was saying. Oh. Denial. That. 

 
 
But it's true. I managed to write that entire post yesterday without really actually letting the news sink in. Like I would jinx something by talking about the obvious likely outcome. Like tomorrow's call from the lab could still magically make it all go away. Like the next time I Google acute leukemia I'm going to get a completely different set of results, so instead of a prognosis that took his age and health and medical history into account, would look at the comment numbers and Twitter outpouring and be all, "OOPS! NEVER MIND, YOU'RE SPECIAL! YOUR PROGNOSIS IS OVER HERE, BEHIND THE FREE UNICORN."

This probably would have been a good opening for that cry, but instead I just went back to work for awhile before spraying the ants with the can of super-toxic Raid that Jason doesn't know I use when he's not around because I don't think the environmentally-friendly stuff he buys does anything and I FUCKING HATE ANTS SO MUCH.  

  

So then I decided to scan more of the old photos my mom sent me a few weeks ago. In preparation for the Move That Was Supposed To Solve Everything, she's probably spent a hundred hours over the last few months meticulously sorting through hundreds of photos, so all seven of us could receive gallon-sized Ziploc bags' worth of orange-y memories. Scanning them seemed like a nice mindless activity. Load photo. Hit button. Stare blankly at wall. Occasionally push tongue back into slack-jawed mouth. Repeat. 

The latest batch are particularly hilarious -- ripe for cautionary photo essays about Jams shorts and tube socks and decade-long awkward phases -- but of course I had to start with the photos of my dad. Most of which were taken with the exotic touristy background locale in mind, so he and I are blurry squinty-eyed figures standing way too far away from the camera. 

 

I plucked out a few that seemed to reflect my mind's memory of him -- sunglasses and a baseball cap when I was really little, then years and years of various plaid ivy caps, coats with patches on the elbows like every good high school English teacher, church clothes every Sunday. Sitting in his chair, or posing at Easter in front of the forsythias he planted so my mother wouldn't have to look at our neighbors giant RV from her beloved screened-in porch out back. 

  

I have better photos of him, of course. Gorgeous ones from my wedding day, as I pin his corsage on in my parents' downsized townhouse living room and he escorts me down the aisle at a church they attended by I did not, anymore, at that time. And more recent ones with our digital cameras that include him and the boys, photos I could immediately check for closed eyes and bad lighting. I have photos from hospital rooms where we still made jokes and treated it like no big thing, here, hold Ezra and make a funny face for the camera. Photos of him at home, with his oxygen, lying down but smiling anyway. 

I'm glad to have those photos, particularly for Noah and Ezra's sake. Ever since they were born, I've been particularly careful to take photos of them with their grandfather, because I knew. I have been walking this path of a kind of...knowing denial for years now. It's coming. Don't panic, but carry a towel. Just in case. 

Right now, though, I admit I prefer the old pictures, from before I knew. 

I never want to forget the before. 

The L Word

I felt vaguely unsettled yesterday. I made multiple stabs at writing a semi-funny story, but every attempt ended with me losing interest and idly staring into space before holding down the delete key and obliterating everything I'd written. Noah was home from school because of the primaries, so I figured I was just distracted by the constant interruptions of Mommy, Mommy, look at this Star Wars toy I made it's from Legos but I put this piece here instead of here and now it's a pod racer Mommy do you like it Mommy it's from Star Wars pew pew pew!

I finally gave up and decided that we both probably needed to go play outside for awhile.

***

Three months ago, my mom mentioned my dad's platelet count. Among probably a good five or six other things that were of concern. Ever since the roller-coaster ride of his heart surgery and multiple bouts of pneumonia, I haven't written much about my dad, I know. There was almost too much to say, what with the continued irregular heartbeat episodes, his permanently damaged lungs keeping him tethered to an oxygen machine 24/7, his diabetes, his hearing loss, the falls, macular degeneration, mysterious bruising, overwhelming fatigue, and the depression that inevitably comes when your age and body and health turn on you so dramatically, when the few simple pleasures you have left -- reading and watching baseball on TV -- are slowly slipping away behind increasingly cloudy vision. 

He only leaves the house for doctor's visits, and there are so many, and there never seems to be good news or an all-clear from any of them anymore. Something else to watch and monitor. Suspicious growths that need to be removed, minor surgery to be performed, something new to be followed up on in three months, give or take the specialist's vacation schedule.

So I didn't really think much of the platelet count thing at all. 

Instead, we all threw our energy into figuring out the house situation -- to get them into a smaller, single-level place, preferably one for seniors that would allow my mother some freedom for the first time in years, where she could feel safe leaving him for longer than it takes to make a furtive trip to Target Pharmacy for prescription refills. So the need for her own visit to her own doctor wouldn't lead to a tearful, panicked phone call because there's no one to watch your dad that day. 

This lead to cleaning and purging and sorting and donating. Then came the discovery of expensive house repairs, at just how overwhelmed they've been in their small townhouse for all this time. Then we found out about a home equity line of credit and more debt than we were expecting. They'll only get how much for the house? The top-choice communities want how much upfront? 

The next-door neighbor had a psychotic break and did WHAT out in her front yard? OMG, that would almost be funny if the whole situation weren't so terribly, horribly sad.

***

The house is going on the market on Monday. The follow-up visit for the platelet count issue was yesterday. 

The doctor took one look at the bloodwork and ordered a biopsy performed on the spot. The results were definitive. It's leukemia. 

The lab is now looking at the biopsy and we'll know the extent of the cancer by the end of the week, but his doctor was kind yet blunt: We are probably looking at something acute. The diagnosis alone means he is already officially too sick for the senior community they planned to move to. He is already saying he does not want to go through chemotherapy. 

My mom related the information over the phone last night and I sat down on the floor. I felt like I was floating. I couldn't really cry. I remembered the time she told me about his throat cancer in a Taco Bell parking lot. The time I sat on the floor in my dorm hallway five years later and she told me it had come back. The time my brother-in-law called in the middle of the night to tell me about the aneurysm. 

At some point, the calls drift together and aren't quite as distinct, even though they kept coming. A mysterious fall. A heart problem. We're at the hospital. At the ER. Headed to the doctor now. Diabetes. Skin cancer.  Heart surgery. Pneumonia. Collapsed lungs and more pneumonia. Congestive heart failure. His eyes, his ears, his lungs, his heart, again. It was always something, he was always aging, always sick. Perhaps I'd started to just expect it, and the phone calls.

But I wasn't expecting this one. I just wasn't expecting it to be this.

 

For Posterity's Sake

We visited my parents this weekend. I haven't really written about them in awhile, I know -- it's easier to report on a crisis than to write entry after entry about a parent's slow decline. But I'll skip ahead to the conclusion of a lot of stuff from this year: My parents are getting ready to sell their house and move into some kind of senior/convalescent/assisted care home. And now I'll gloss over THAT and skip ahead to the bright side of things, which is that my mother's attempts to purge their house of as much clutter and stuff as possible mean that I came home with a HUGE BAG of hideously embarrassing artifacts from my childhood and adolescence to share with you guys. 

There was also an ex-boyfriend sighting and if you're the type who likes to keep a mental score when it comes to these things, let me assure you that I TOTALLY WIN, OH MY GOD.

Bright side! We shall look at the bright side! 

But before I start firing up the scanner so y'all can make fun of my hair and I dunno, I think there's some poetry or some stories about unicorns in there too, please allow me to poke loving fun at my freak children one more time.

 

Noah (pictured above as part of his Portraits In Irony, I'm Not Tired series), has decided that his name is now Noah Yoda. And that Noah should always be spelled N-W-A-H, and he is going to sign your Father's Day card that way, even though he hasn't quite mastered the W so his signature looks something like this: N /\/\/\//\/\/\/AH. But dammit, he is going to spell his name semi-phonetically from now on and there's nothing you can do about it, except curse yourself and your nagging mom-voice and your remnant of Philly twang that probably created this NoWAH mess in the first place.

Also, he will only pose for photos wearing a hat. He is willing to use a very loose definition of a "hat", however.

 

So. There is that.

And now Ezra, who is officially 20 months going on 17 years old. 

 

That's the tubing from my dad's oxygen machine. And the "I know I'm not supposed to touch this" side-eye.

 

And now the "people are saying 'no' to me" scowl of WTF.

 

OoooooohSNAP YOU GUYS.

 

But I'm stillsocuteright?

 

Moving on from the tubing, he's now surveying the room for choking hazards or things to start fires with.

(By the way, his hair only looks like that because he smeared macaroni and cheese in it. I mean, obviously.)

 

MINIATURE CARS AND DISTRACTED ADULTS! NOM NOM NOM NOM

 

Uh-oh. I've been spotted.

 

Willjustusebothhandslikethis.
 
My mom -- along with my baby blankets and junior high class portraits and all of my grandmother's Depression Glass -- passed along the advice to poke some airholes in a box and keep Ezra in there until he's 25. I asked her if maybe Gladware would work too. 

 

(Oh yes, this portrait's a keeper.)