My sexy man hasn’t been feeling 100% these days. He’s had a bit of a head cold – stuffy nose, sinus pressure, and, overall, feels pretty crappy. When he gets sick, it shows. He just looks miserable and, if he was dealing with a normal girlfriend, would evoke genuine empathy and nurturing from her. But, he’s dealing with me.
This isn’t the first time in our three years together that he’s been sick. There have been bouts with the flu, worse head colds, etc. The usual stuff. Every time, his vulnerability during the illness has aroused feelings of ANGER in me. Feelings that I’ve never before really been able to understand… until this morning when I finally put two and two together.
He was lounging on the couch drinking tea and looking sadly pathetic – his eyes watery, his nose red, his breaths coming in long labored sighs. I was tossing some ingredients into the crockpot and feeling myself begin to boil inside. My mind starts churning – “why do I feel angry at him? It’s not his fault he’s sick… why can’t be just be healthier? what is wrong with me??” I move onto stuffing our goodwill donations into plastic bags and with each forceful movement, my annoyance continues to build. Finally, he says, “You know, being angry at me for being sick won’t make me get any better.” Of course, that comment just further fed the flames. Not only did he realize I was angry, but he even realized why…
I didn’t respond to his statement, but my thoughts continued to jumble together as I tried to come to some sort of rational conclusion as to why him being sick made me so mad. The only thing that kept fumbling to the front of the line was related to my dad.
When my dad would get a little cold, he would become totally incapacitated – thank God he rarely got sick! I remember him lying on the couch, moaning, “I think I’m gonna die… I think I’m dying…” Mostly in jest, but perhaps he felt so miserable, he actually believed himself a little bit, who knows. All I know is that when he wasn’t feeling well, it seemed the end of the world. Which is a little bit similar to how my sexy man appears (and, probably the majority of people – myself included) in his worst moments. By the time my family finally got confirmation that my dad’s cancer had returned, my dad had been in pain for so long, he seemed to take the diagnosis as a relief. My dad had been suffering for months by that point and had very little strength. The doctors explained that the tumor was situated so that it was impossible to do surgery and that chemo and radiation treatments would maybe prolong my dad’s life for a few months, but quality of life would obviously diminish. For a few days there, we tried to convince my dad to do the chemo treatments – a miracle could happen! We thought about getting a second opinion for the surgery… But my dad, it seemed, had no interest in any treatments whatsoever. To my grieving and uncomprehending heart, it appeared that my dad was grateful for the diagnosis because it gave him an excuse to die: he left us sixteen days later.
In the beginning, it looked like my dad was trying, like he was fighting. After having a whipple procedure done to remove the cancer the first time, he and my mom worked hard to change his diet, take vitamins, get stronger, really take care of themselves. He refused to do chemo or radiation, though, or look into experimental treatments at larger hospitals. We couldn’t push him too much – it was his body – but at least it seemed like he was making an effort to be healthier. I know that the survival rates with pancreatic cancer, even after the whipple, are so poor, the horrible process of chemo and radiation is probably not worth it, but I still hoard a bit of anger at my dad for not doing everything he possibly could to fight the cancer. Did he not think of ever seeing me get married? Did he not think of ever being a grandfather? Did he not think that maybe we still needed him?? When the cancer returned and the doctors told us there was really nothing they could do, it visibly looked like my dad was relieved – there was a name for the pain, there was a reason for him to not stay in the game any longer. I can’t imagine the sort of pain he must have experienced, and for so long, but to see the relief, the total acquiescence in his eyes, it hurt me so much.
I wanted to see ANGER; I wanted to see STUBBORNESS; I wanted to see DEFIANCE; I wanted to see a FIGHTER. I wanted to see my dad – the man who had been a cop and the family drill seargent – tell us that he wasn’t going to give up, he wasn’t going to let this thing beat him. But, now I wonder if that man, who I so desperately wanted my father to be, ever existed at all.
Today, all of these thoughts and images finally emerged into a clear realization that when my sexy man gets sick, the anger that I still feel towards my dad is reawakened and finds a new target. I still feel angry that my dad didn’t fight; that it turns out he wasn’t the strong, stubborn, determined man I always thought him to be. I found myself telling my sexy man that I worried that if something – like cancer – happened to HIM, would HE be mentally strong enough to fight it? This scenario, of course, has nothing to do with how a person feels when they have a cold. It’s a completely different thing. But, this was the evidence of my mind transposing my dad’s response to cancer with my sexy man’s experience of a common cold. My sexy man’s vulnerability and weakness during a little head cold triggers that fear in me that he won’t fight for me, for us, if the going gets tougher. And that fear, anger and disappointment all goes back to how I feel towards my dad, but how do I begin to deal with that? Is it a lack of understanding of my dad? Do I just have to “let it go and know that my dad loved me?” But I don’t know that anyone can ever convince me that my dad didn’t just give up… and that, THAT, is the hardest of all for my heart to accept.
