The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,98

aback by the speed of my decision, unprepared for this sudden new move, as if in some self-protective tactic he had allowed himself to believe and hope that this enlarged ovary was nothing serious.

Another reason I hate hope—it slows down reaction time, it lulls one into complacency; it allows one to live in useless delusion. So, we fought, he arguing that I was being too rash, that any surgery is major, and I arguing that he was constantly living in denial and unprepared to confront reality and that I didn’t have the luxury of time to sit around and deliberate; after all, I was simply following through on my promise to him to do everything I could to stay alive for as long as possible because if it were up to me I wouldn’t do any of this shit. It was a bad fight, which on top of the stresses of trying to schedule the surgery and the ongoing worry of what will be found during surgery, drove me to the brink. Yet more insanity.

Up to now, I’ve not written specifically about my and Josh’s relationship and how it has weathered the stresses and pressures of cancer. Josh is a much more private person than I am, and I want to respect his need for privacy. All the same, friends do ask me how Josh is doing and how we are doing as a couple. Because in addition to destroying bodies, cancer has an incredible power to destroy relationships, too. The struggle to keep relationships whole and healthy as cancer does its worst is particularly arduous and, for some people, impossible.

A friend who died within two years of her diagnosis told me she sometimes felt like her husband and she were two ghosts living in the same house, pale shadows of their former happy selves, circling each other, not knowing what to say, disconnected from each other and the rest of the world, so lonely and isolated in their individual suffering. I now know what she meant. Because Josh and I are on sharply divergent paths—mine leads toward death and whatever awaits, and his toward a new life without me but with the children and a new wife. My greatest fears are a painful death and not doing everything I want to do before I die. His greatest fear is going on without me. I am angry at him for the happy life I know he will rebuild after I am gone. He is angry at me for getting sick and dying. I feel endless guilt for having married him and dooming him to be a widower at such a young age, and the children to be motherless. He feels endless guilt for not being able to save me. And in all of our fear, anger, guilt, and sadness we feel alone, and so impotent in our inability to help each other.

That’s how we are doing, even as we love and need each other more than ever before.

I cope by planning. I make lists of all our expenses and how and when they’re paid so when I’m not here Josh will know what to do. I talk to his boss secretly to tell him what I want for Josh’s career. I ask my beloved contractor to do me the favor of helping Josh with things around the apartment. I talk to the administrators and teachers at the girls’ school so they can help the girls get into good high schools so that some of the pressure is taken off of Josh. I’m building a beautiful home for him and the girls. I’m getting them a dog. Josh would tell me he doesn’t care about any of those things, that he just wants me. Sadly, that’s really the only thing I can’t give him.

In the midst of all this craziness, I went to get a routine dental cleaning from my periodontist. I had X-rays done because one tooth was feeling a little strange. The X-rays showed that I have five cavities. Five freaking cavities! I’ve never had so many cavities. It really started to feel like everything was going wrong, one more damn thing to deal with, something else in my body falling apart. Discovering these cavities just about pushed me over the edge. I called my longtime dentist, Dr. D., and asked for an emergency appointment. In light of my upcoming surgery, I had to get these cavities dealt with ASAP. I hadn’t seen Dr. D. in almost