Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,108
grief, he probably feels completely alone.
I don’t think it would be helpful for Julie to know every detail, but I believe that their time together will be richer if there’s space for Matt to show more of his humanity during this process. And if they can have a deeper experience of each other in the time that they have left together, Julie will live more fully within Matt after she’s gone.
“What do you think Matt meant by wanting the night off from cancer?” I ask.
Julie sighs. “All the doctor appointments, the lost pregnancies, everything I want a night off from too. He wants to talk about how his research is going and the new taco place down the street and . . . you know, the normal things people our age talk about. The whole time I’ve been going through this, all we cared about was finding a way for me to live. But now, he can’t make plans with me for even a year from now, and he can’t go meet someone else. The only way he can move forward is if I die.”
I hear what she’s getting at. Underlying their ordeal is a fundamental truth: For all of the ways that Matt’s life has changed, it will eventually return to some kind of normal. And that, I suspect, pisses Julie off. I ask if she’s angry with Matt, envious.
“Yes,” she whispers, as though she’s sharing a shameful secret. I tell her it’s okay. How could she not be envious of the fact that he gets to live?
Julie nods. “I feel guilty for putting him through this and jealous that he gets a future,” she says, adjusting a pillow behind her back. “And then I feel guilty for being jealous.”
I think about how common it is, even in everyday situations, to be jealous of a spouse and how taboo it is to talk about that. Aren’t we supposed to be happy for their good fortune? Isn’t that what love is about?
In one couple I saw, the wife got her dream job on the same day that her husband was let go from his, which made for extreme awkwardness every night at the dinner table. How much should she share of her days without inadvertently making her husband feel bad? How could he manage his envy without raining on her parade? How noble can people reasonably be expected to be when their partners get something they desperately want but can’t have?
“Matt came home from the gym yesterday,” Julie says, “and he said that he had a fantastic workout, and I said, ‘That’s great,’ but I felt so sad, because we used to go to the gym together. He’d always tell people that I was the one with the stronger body, the marathon runner. ‘She’s the superstar, I’m the wimp!’ he’d say, and the people we became friends with at the gym started calling us that.
“Anyway, we used to have sex a lot after the gym. So yesterday when he gets back, he comes over and kisses me, and I start kissing him back, and we have sex, but I’m out of breath in a way I’ve never been before. I don’t let on, though, so Matt gets up to shower, and as he’s walking into the bathroom, I look at his muscles and think, I used to be the one with the stronger body. And then I realize that it’s not just Matt who’s watching me die. It’s me, too. I’m watching myself die. And I’m so angry at everyone who gets to live. My parents will outlive me! My grandparents might too! My sister’s having a second baby. But me?”
She reaches for her water bottle. After Julie recovered from her initial cancer treatment, her doctors told her that drinking water flushes out toxins, so Julie began carrying a sixty-four-ounce bottle everywhere she went. Now it’s no longer useful but it’s become a habit. Or a prayer.
“It’s hard to see what’s still there,” I say, “and to let it in when you’re grieving for your own life.”
We sit in silence for a while. Finally, she wipes her eyes and the slip of a smile forms on her lips. “I have an idea.”
I look at her expectantly.
“You’ll tell me if it’s too wacky?”
I nod.
“I was just thinking,” she begins, “that instead of spending my time being jealous of everyone else, maybe part of my purpose for the time I have left could be helping the people I love to move forward.”