September 29, 2015

By Amelia Sauter

Everything has changed. Our daily lives are filled with different conversations, ones I didn’t imagine having until we turned 85 years old. They include bizarre lines that have never come out of my mouth before like Good job peeing! and The fluid in your drainage balls is looking pretty good today and Don’t worry, Leah, I don’t mind doing the dishes. I wake up in the morning and think immediately about cancer. The phone rings and instead of cursing it, I jump to grab it in case it’s someone from the surgeon’s office with new information. I can’t sleep well at night because I’m listening in case Leah needs something, and I’m worried about rolling into her, too. We tried sleeping on opposite sides of the bed so I wasn’t near the wound and the drains, but after 20 years together, it was like trying to sign your name with the opposite hand. Illegible, disorienting, and just plain silly.

Cancer makes everything else seem stupid, like filling out the planning paperwork for the Health Department for our restaurant’s new kitchen and getting the truck inspected before the end of the month. Our jokes have become morbid, like when we were both dragging ass in the grocery store and I said, “I’ve got a migraine. What’s your lame excuse?” And when I made us dirty martinis with the juice from our empanada olives, and announced one was Caregiver size and one Patient size and told her to guess which one was hers.

Leah doesn’t need much now, and I don’t know what to do with myself. She won’t be working for the next four weeks. What’s my new normal? Nothing is what it was a month ago. Cancer literally stopped us in our tracks. Now I don’t know where to start, and I’m not sure where I’m going. What do I want to do today? What should I be doing today? Those are two different questions, and I don’t have answers to either one.