Dec. 3, 2016, 10:38 p.m.
Life has been very busy since the last time I posted. In late October, I made a trip East to attend two conferences as well as visit with my grandmother Muriel, Aila's great-grandmother and namesake. I had been excited about this visit for some time, hoping to surprise her by showing up at her new nursing home on the last Sunday in November with pictures of the kids, a lemon meringue pie (her favorite), and my love. But several weeks before my visit, she developed pneumonia and entered hospice. At first, it seemed like her 105-year-old body might launch a comeback. Of course, this is what everyone thought would happen, since at some point--probably around when she turned 100--we all got used to the idea that she was going to live forever and kind of stopped thinking about whether or not she might die. That was the beauty of my grandmother, that she was so comfortably leisurely in her humanness for so much of her life, that it truly seemed possible and even likely that she could go on forever.
She died on November 8th, hours before Brian and I took her great-granddaughter to a chemotherapy infusion at UCSF and hours before the country elected Donald Trump president, losing its chance to elect Hillary Clinton its first female president. In the words of Judith Viorst, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I was lucky enough to be able to say goodbye to my grandmother during my visit at the end of October. She was mostly cognizant and clearly cogent in her expressions of love. And it was clear that she knew she was going to die soon, probably even hoping for it. I rubbed her back and held her hand, and we together laughed at my father for a while and reminisced. Zander and I flew back to Boston together two weeks later to officially say goodbye, at her wake, funeral, and burial. I might have taken Aila with me instead, but it was a steroid week in her chemotherapy treatment, and I couldn't risk her unpredictable and wild moods. Zander was well-behaved and charming, and his presence reminded everyone (including me) that I wasn't a child any longer, but a grown woman with a family of her own. There was a mountain of family drama, and the more I tried to evade it, the more it seemed to follow me. But at the end of the day, Zander and I would return to our hotel room, snuggle into our king bed, and laugh about something silly that had happened that day. I was very grateful for my son that weekend.
Declan turned two! On November 18th, we hung up a Happy Birthday sign and sang to him all day long. He was only eight and half months old when Aila was diagnosed...and somehow now he's a tiny (but robust!) man. Almost the same size and with the same amount of hair these days, he and Aila are close playmates and comrades. We are frequently asked whether they are twins, in fact, and I generally simply and awkwardly answer "No." The longer answer is emotional, complicated, and deeply personal.
My father's decided that he will be moving back to Boston soon. I don't entirely understand the reasons for his decision, but I do know it is what he wants. We feel sad, if we're honest. While he has been here, we could pretend that we had something that felt like a family around us. The presence (and absence) of supportive family has been a pretty huge wildcard since Aila was diagnosed, which is probably obvious from a dearth of tales about the presence of family except my father's and a select few key players. Someday when I'm feeling clear and bold, I'll tell my truth about this. But the right time is not now, and while we wish my father well during his next adventure, we lament his exit from our daily lives.
As Aila slides into Month 17 of chemotherapy, I can now report at least three separate conversations I've had with acquaintances or colleagues where someone has expressed shock and dismay that she is STILL in treatment. She is. We are. She has at least a year to go. In fact, for other cancer family readers, it's probably useful to share her blood results at this stage in her Maintenance treatment. In short, she has almost no immunity. She has enough neutrophils to fight off things that may kill her but not much else at this point. So in the last two weeks, she has spent two separate 40-hour stints during which her body just shuts down and sleeps. During both, she breathed heavily while she slept and had both a low-grade fever and rapid heartrate. After both, she popped awake a new child, with a residual cough or cold in both cases and a smile on her face. During every hour of the forty, her parents stressed and worried and took her temperature a million times, just waiting for the 101 that would take us to the ER.
It's important to look at the glass half full, and we do, I promise. We have amazing children, we really do. I kept texting Brian from my grandmother's services in Massachusetts with tales of the amazingness of our oldest son, as I watched him soften family tensions decades old with his spirit and glee. When Aila stands on the front of her tiny boogie board in the living room (as she did tonight), leaving room for Declan to stand in the back before proclaiming, "surfing-a-bunga!" while they both dance, and while I think, "where did they come up with this, where?"...it's easy to realize how truly lucky we are, how amazing the world is. AND hard to forget that when the Cosgroverstreets surf, it is on a complicated sea where pediatric cancer is the other half of the glass. I believe that it's important to teach our kids about that half too--the empty half, the hard and painful half. Not so that they will become mired and entangled in the pain or identified by it, but rather so they may know their own strength in its wake, know that they can survive and carry on. Even surf.
Comments
Angela Tana 7 years, 10 months ago
You are always in my thoughts. I hope this flu season you can all stay clear of all the viruses out there. XOXO
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