Fear (aka, here we go again)

When I was growing up, my dad drank pretty heavily.  Wednesday nights were the worst because that was golf night.  I remember hating those nights, waiting for him to get home. I'd play outside as long as possible, watching, checking for his car to drive up the road. I knew if he wasn't home by the time I would go to bed, he'd come home pretty drunk.  I would lie in bed and wait, and wait. Most of the time as I was growing up, I had a Siamese cat named Buttons. She almost always slept with me and it was a huge comfort to have her.  She would curl up behind my knees and happily purr as I broke out into a cold sweat, waiting. 

I love my father, my parents, tremendously. I don't recall this to bring up "bad" times, or because of anything to do with those days and nights other than the fact that it's the first time that I remember feeling "fear".  I remember laying there and my extremities would be cold in the middle of summer. And how my blood would feel cold as I would hear the car door slam and Dad would come into the house. There would be yelling and screaming and fighting; I would lie in bed trying not to hear it. And my body would just be so ice cold inside. I don't think I really understood what I was feeling then, but now I know.

My father-in-law, Grandpa J to the kids, was diagnosed with lung cancer right after Thanksgiving. And now we know it's stage 4 lung cancer.  Just like the moment I heard the surgeon tell us Margie had cancer, when I heard Jim's news, my blood ran cold.  My feet felt like frozen blocks - just like way back when. Fear.  Gut wrenching fear.  It passes, and then it comes and goes but that initial fear is so pure and immobilizing that it becomes ingrained in the brain.


I remember prediagnosis with both - not yet knowing what was wrong but knowing something wasn't right.  Margie had been having some pain for a few months.  We batted some emails back and forth one day while she was at work.  "Have you scheduled an appointment with the doctor yet?"  "No but I will"  "You need to get this checked out" "I know, I will".  As I was sending emails to her, at one point I stopped for about 30 seconds because a little voice in my head whispered "cancer, what if??" and the fear struck me through and through - my blood running cold, my feet numb; and then it passed until we talked with the surgeon many months later - after her first surgery when they found the cancer.  Then it lasted for weeks...months.


We went out and saw Jim in October - had a great visit, but he wasn't feeling well, was in pain from what he thought was a ribhead out of whack.  I remember when we were loading up the car to come home, we spent some time at the barn, chatting, hanging out while the kids said good bye to the animals and then as we walked to the car and started giving hugs, I told him that I hoped he felt better soon and to get it checked out and let us know how he's doing - and then I felt it.  That same stab of "what if" (though I don't think I thought those words) and the grip of fear that lasted just seconds.



And now, here we are. Margie, a year and a half later - thank God doing well but another scan coming up next week.  Little slivers of fear if one thinks about it too much.  And Grandpa J, just starting the terrible journey.  So much unknown, so much to fear that could consume us if we let it.  

I fixate on certain songs when I am gripped with fear and worry. To quote Pearl Jam's Just Breath:  "I don't wanna hurt, there's so much in this world to make me bleed".  Sometimes I feel like May from The Secret Life of Bees.  I need a stone wall like she had, a spot to place the rolled-up tiny pieces of paper with my hurt and fears and anxieties, the injustices; to fill in the spaces between the stones with them all.  I guess if I look back over this blog, that's really what this is...my place to bleed when necessary. A place to let the fear (now that I recognize it) flow down and out of my frost bitten, fear-frozen toes.