C is for ... Cardiac and for Cancer

Towards the end of 2011 events conspired and I was tested for my mettle. A number of trials appeared at once at my door and I had to find the reserves to cope and carry on. Just as I thought it was all over, my brother was suddenly and dramatically hospitalised. He's diabetic. He'd been managing this illness through diet and exercise and we'd all thought he had a handle on it. Even he thought so. But it is inherently human to become complacent, I think. Just as things begin to go well in our lives, we pay them less attention. And so it was with him. He paid less attention to what he was consuming, though still keeping a careful eye on his weight and continuing to exercise well. The result, however, was that he was whisked off to the emergency department suffering from congestive heart failure.

A dramatic, worrisome and tiring three weeks followed as he was treated and prepped for a quadruple bypass. My mother was teetering on the brink of going out of her mind with concern - seeing your child (whatever the age) in hospital, near death, is never an easy thing. As she said when told of his predicament, it was supposed to be her in hospital with her children hovering around the bedside not the other way around. We trouped through those weeks, emotions running high, energy running low. Visits to hospital blurred into one another and I fell into bed exhausted most nights. Coping with the sudden mortality of my brother, negotiating my own life around taking my mother to and from the hospital every day because I was concerned she shouldn't be driving in her emotional state, all took its toll. Eventually the surgery was conducted and he came through it. Not well. His recovery was slow. Much slower than it should have been. He spent longer than anticipated in the ICU. And he didn't bounce back to reasonable health as predicted. Instead he declined. He lost more weight, looked more frail and began to feel more despondent as his own mortality and the-things-not-done in his life came into stark reality. And we all became intimately, if unwillingly, familiar with medical euphemisms and language.

Shortly before Christmas he was hospitalised again. Nobody knew why he wasn't recovering on schedule and to the enormous credit of the doctors at that public hospital, they were not satisfied with simply letting him go home and cope. A litany of tests, and they truly were testing of him, were run. He was anaemic and nobody could work out why. There didn't appear to be any firm source of bleeding and every procedure to account for his blood counts came up negative. In the meantime, he became more and more frail and less and less hopeful. His talk soon turned to the possibility of no recovery, of leaving his family, his wife and young sons, without him. His mind went to dark places and struggled to see any light or hope.

Then Life played its trump card. He was diagnosed with cancer. Not any run-of-the-mill, relatively-easy-to-treat cancer, but a variety that was aggressive, insidious and rarely seen in this country. Again the various doctors swung into a flurry of action and he was quickly put onto surgical lists, treated as best as possible for his anaemia and readied for the inevitable extirpation of the tumour. Remember this is not ancient history. This is not told from the perspective of temporal distance. This is recent, nascent and unfolding. The day before his surgery, he sounded more calm, less breathless and better than he had for months. He was comparatively upbeat and appeared to have made a crucial decision in his own wellness. And I do mean "wellness" not illness or health. He underwent his surgery two days ago. Shortly after surgery, he was awake, sitting up, chatting and finally looking like he should have two months ago. He appears to have turned a corner. The road ahead on this particular journey is both long and arduous. Recovery will be slow and pot-holed, but his new-found positive attitude will, I believe, help to smooth the way.

I feel like I finally have back the brother I lost through life, circumstance and finally terrible, testing illness. I'm hopeful that he'll seize this opportunity at life and do all that he wants. And I'm intensely grateful for the lessons it has taught me.

My "Like Water for Chocolate" Moment

It was Father's Day today here in Australia. A difficult day for me. My father died 14 years ago and every year since, Father's Day and his birthday have been days on which I fall into a terrible funk. I remember him and miss him always, but these two days are the ones I set aside for truly indulging myself. I allow myself to feel completely sad and bereft, only pulling myself together on Father's Day for LomL's sake. My darling, long-suffering and patient husband knows how I am on these days. He allows me the latitude to miss my father, to feel sorry for myself and wish for what might have been. He understands, he checks on me and he leaves me alone to weep at the sink.

Usually, I skip the Father's Day gathering with the in-laws. It's more than I can handle. The blatant reminder that my father isn't here. This year, I found myself there and offering to make food for the occasion. I woke early, helped B1 and B2 to make LomL's Father's Day breakfast in bed, then got on with making pies for lunch. I was washing spinach when it happened. I made the mistake of thinking about the fact that I was making these pies for LomL's father, but would never again have the opportunity to do this for my own father. It occurred to me that I had only one year with my own father after I married. The pain was visceral. A tear escaped my eye. That one tear seemed to give permission to all the others waiting just behind. I couldn't stop. I found myself weeping uncontrollably into a sink full of English spinach.

Ironically, in the middle of my weeping, I couldn't help thinking about the Laura Esquivel novel, Like Water for Chocolate. The image of Tita, grief-stricken and weeping through the preparation for Rosaura and Pedro's wedding feast, and the magical effect of her sadness transported through the food, leapt to my mind. In the midst of my sorrow, I couldn't help but wonder if my emotions would be contained in the food.

I was too tired and caught in my own thoughts to really notice whether that was so today. I wonder still.

Words Said Too Much and Not Enough

There has been tension brewing between B1 and B2 for some time now and it all came to a head today. Being boys, the end result was a bit of argy bargy, but it brought to the surface some really important issues.

B2 has recently gotten into the very bad habit of telling his big brother that he "hates" him whenever B1 does something annoying. The words are spoken with great emotion but little real feeling and absolutely no thought. B2 is very quick to blame B1 for anything that goes wrong in a Bart Simpson kind of way. LomL and I have been trying to deal with it with humour, ramping up the stakes, suggesting that "of course B1 was also responsible for all the ills of the world, both world wars, the extinction of the dinosaurs, global warming and the sinking of the Titanic". This has helped B1 see that we understand that B2's claims are outrageous and unfair.

Naturally, B1 has not been dealing with the situation well. It's hard to brush off statements like "I hate you!" when they're shrieked by your baby brother. B1's level of confusion has also gone through the roof since B2 gleefully screams his hatred at him one minute then runs up and asks him to play the next. It had all gone on far too long and today I finally blew my stack.

As I was explaining the situation to B2 and making him understand exactly how B1 felt each time these barbed words were spat at him, it made me realise just how much B1 loves his brother. Despite being stung with these words on a regular basis, despite hearing "I love you" from B2 only when prompted, B1 continues to entertain his little brother, continues to play with him, continues to protect him and help him. I felt so proud of him in that moment, so proud of the man he will one day be and so very privileged to be parenting him.

Even B2 finally got it when I asked him how he'd feel if his best buddy screamed "I hate you!" at him on a regular basis and pointed out that despite this, his big brother continued to play with him, try to do the things he likes and suggest activities.

We've made a pact now. "I hate you!" is NEVER to be spoken to another person in this house again. Not ever. We're allowed to hate a particular act or a particular behaviour, we're allowed to hate an outcome or even a situation. But never, never, NEVER are we to hate another person.

The old myth goes that if you say "I love you" too much, it loses its meaning. Rubbish, I say. You can never say "I love you" too much if you really mean it.

And there's the key. Too often words are spoken without thought for the meaning behind them. One phrase, three words... I hate you...I love you...both said too much without enough regard for their meaning.