Six years on and grief’s my new roommate
Friday was a significant day for me. It was the first Friday the 13th of May since 2016, the year Jack and I took a risk on that fate-tempting day to elope. I gave you that story last May* when my years married equaled my years widowed.
When I was a kid, Owl Magazine had an image of a microscopic view of the inside of a skin pore showing all the pus and mites and whatnots that lurk within. Although it turned my stomach, I kept going back to it to appreciate the gruesomeness of it. And that’s how I’ve been for the last couple of weeks. I’ve thrown myself into the spider web of memory where, like a fly, I’ve become entangled. Oh, it’s not 24/7 - lest you all leave this blog worried about me. Not like that. But even more than usual, I’ve deliberately gone places to relive some of the experience of my life with Jack and his death. I’ve ruminated about life and death; about the tension between living in the past and planning for the future; and about how the only thing that doesn’t die is grief itself.
It began with the insatiable way I consumed Dr. Stefanie Green’s book, This is Assisted Dying: a Doctor’s Story of Empowering Patients at the End of Life. Or maybe the consumption was a symptom of an already-present urge. Regardless, this book was gut-wrenching. Dr. Green is one of the leading doctors providing medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada and heads the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers. Her book weaves a series of MAiD case studies into her own life as a mother, daughter, wife, friend, and physician. Her experiences brought back so many of the issues Jack and I faced, but none more difficult than the worry about whether Jack would keep the mental capacity to consent at the point of his death. I’ve written about this moment before, most recently in the context of my cat’s euthanasia. While Jack’s MAiD provider was someone we met together only once before his death, as Dr. Green describes, the relationship is an extraordinary one and upon reading - and sobbing through - her chapter on ineligibility due to capacity, I wrote Dr. Weiss:
I don't even know why I'm telling you this -- perhaps because you were the other person in the room that day who knew the law the way I did. I knew you would deem him ineligible if he had been. Just as Stefanie describes. That must be horrible and I salute all of you for the work you do.
When I finished Dr. Green’s book, I was spent. Recommended reading for anyone who has been even peripherally involved in the process or who think they might be one day. And you all could be, I assure you.
While the end of Jack’s life is perhaps the most compelling part of our story together, it’s the time I spent in the caregiving trenches that was hardest for me. That’s the stage we were at when we had our private City Hall ceremony. This was all brought back to me recently when a close cancer-spouse friend was thrust back into a new round of symptoms and treatment. I was teleported back to the rollercoaster ride with Jack, to that time as we ascended, strapped in, someone else at the controls, waiting for results. Would we roar down the other side, arms in the air, screaming “woohoo, it’s shrunk”? Or would we cower with heads down as the coaster-car hurtled towards what seemed like certain death? Or worse for me - would the car stop on the way up, leaving us looking skyward in a prolonged period of scanxiety, a victim of the under-resourced amusement park we call our health care system?
Thankfully, those stalled rollercoaster cars were rare for us. I credit that to Jack being treated at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. PMH brags about being one of the top 5 cancer centres in the world. I don’t know how they determine it: Newsweek ranks it only #10. What I do know is we felt very well cared for there, physically and emotionally (well, Jack wasn’t too concerned with the latter!).
I’ve written about my PMH fundraising efforts before. I burst out of the walking gate in 2016 with all the enthusiasm of a new cancer-spouse, eager to do something - anything - useful. I was ready to walk 25 kms with a bunch of others affected by this terrible disease all raising sums for the cause. PMH can offer such great support to its patients and their families in part because it receives much higher donations than other charities. The pervasive nature of the disease opens wallets. As time passes, though, it’s harder and harder to continue to ask for those dollars for PMH’s annual walking event. I still strive to achieve my own personal walking goal of an average of 8 kms / day. So far, 7.2 in 2022. It was a lousy winter for walking. However, that’s still about 950 kms so far this year. I walk for cancer and for Jack but increasingly, I do it for me. Walking is when I reflect, whether it’s through conversation with my pandemic pal, Janice, or internally with my canine companions, Bidi and Molly. Many of these blogs have been conceived on my three daily walks through the streets of Weston.
I plan, however, to don my runners next September 10, 2022 for the 20th Annual Walk to Conquer Cancer — not sure what its form will be this year, but I know I’ll be doing something somewhere to walk that day.
If you’d like to remember Jack, mark our anniversary, or contribute to honour someone else, then please click here and donate to my walk. Every little bit counts. Thank you.
I am spending a weekend in quiet reflection. Grief doesn’t die. It lives with you like a roommate when you’d rather live alone, a roommate that amuses you over a glass of wine, making up for all the times they leave lights on in unoccupied rooms or eat your chips without asking.
* For the video version of my account of our wedding, click here.
