body language

In the days after Mike's diagnosis, I was spending most of my time either on the phone or accompanying him to various medical appointments. I was arranging child care, trying to communicate with our insurance, coordinating care between four different medical institutions, looking for a house to live in, looking for a school for the children to attend.

(Wait. Did that really happen? Did I actually live through those days? I am incredulous.)

Every time I paused to push a warm, narrow back on a swing or rest my head against a cool countertop, why I was scrambling like this overwhelmed my mind. Those were the times I would notice that every part of my body hurt. I hurt in a way I never had before, from the inside out and the outside in. It was something I registered, attempted a deep breath, and then placed at #37 of my priority list.

I remember unexpectedly walking into Mike inside the sun-filled dining room of our friend's home, where we were staying. I fell into his hug. (Where, always, I am home.) All was exposed and raw then. I started crying and heard myself blurt out, I hurt so much. He was the one with cancer, he was the one going through horrifying staging procedures. The ache I felt was terrible, disorienting.

Later, when friends said that I was looking skinny, I chalked it up to chemo couvade. In those first weeks I too felt nauseous, sometimes put off by food - previously unheard of for this lover of cooking and eating.

This has happened with my kids too, especially as tiny babies, when the boundaries blur and fade. We were hungry, we were tired, we needed each other's touch. Whether I wanted to or not, I felt what they felt.

I would have liked to turn off the empathy switch during radiation treatments. The inside of my mouth felt burnt, raw. Nothing like Mike's suffering, and as I watched his ability to eat and drink decline, I wasn't about to complain. One night I went out with my mom for fancy cocktails and ordered a drink that sounded like something I would normally love, laced with lime and ginger. But then sitting there at the bar, I took a sip, and alongside the ambivalence about being out, the acidity burned against my raw skin. Ouch. (It is, by the way, tragic to order the wrong thing when you are out for the first time in months.)

Despite the inconvenience, sympathy pains offer me a kind of comfort. When I am afraid, when I doubt all, my body tells me something true. My being is responding, mirroring, holding my beloved so deeply. Even when on the surface I think things like: I am so mad at him. I am so sick of this cancer. I am so fed up with taking care of everything and everyone. - even then, my feelings and thoughts cannot disrupt the holy bond we share. I can't trick myself. My body reminds me of our love, in its own language.

I have a newfound ability to cough up and spit out phlegm, with all the glorious noise and drama that I used to admire in my dad and sister. They both were amazing. (Rachel still is). I've been watching Mike spit out secretions for months now. That's what I needed, I guess. Now I hock up goo and spit it into the snow like nobody's business, like my libertarian Texan who-gives-a-shit great-grandpa Diddy (much to my children's horror, and fascination).

Did you just spit?

Mike's ongoing struggles make us worry about lymphoma. Did the treatment work? Is it really gone? We have to wait. In the meantime, yesterday I noticed that I have a swollen lymph node just under my chin, which is the very one they removed from Mike during the biopsy back in July.

My lymphatic system is calling to my husband's lymphatic system.

That is so romantic.

It's not quite accurate though, to describe my body as a discreet entity. I am struggling to articulate that noticing the precision with which my body empathizes with Mike - experiencing those layers of my imagination and emotions that just escape conscious comprehension in my limbs, in my muscles, in my mouth - it is shining a light, albeit feeble, on the wholeness of my being. The battery is almost dead in this flashlight, but its faint glow suggests something beautiful and hard to understand, let alone speak about: my body, mind, and spirit are entwined. Like yours.

To love someone is an integrated, being-wide gesture that you make over and over again.

It's Sunday so I have to mention that today we heard Corinthians in church. It sounded new to my ears: [Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.