Among the many things that I am finding challenging these days (and there is no shortage of options) is reconciling all the apparent and emerging contradictions that have become so much of the texture of our lives. 

It has been barely four months since the discovery of Carol Anne’s brain tumor, and yet it feels like years have passed since that day.  Between the end of June and the beginning of November, our family has experienced the following:

  • Carol Anne’s brain tumor discovery
    • And brain surgery!
  • A wedding
    • That included family getting together for the first time in years, or for the first time ever!
    • And also included time in a different hospital for Carol Anne’s mom, Jane
  • Kathleen moved to a new city, with a new husband, to start a new program
    • Marking also the first time for both Kathleen and Matthew moving in with a roommate! 
  • Carol Anne’s very involved brain cancer diagnosis
    • Which also precipitated the start of cancer treatment
    • So we (I say “we”, but really it was just Carol Anne) went through 33 radiation treatments
  • Zamira starting a new program
  • Squeezed in a flying trip by the whole family to Toronto for Jane’s funeral between radiation treatments
  • The addition of two new kittens to the household!
  • The loss of three cats to the household: two who moved away with Kathleen and Martin, and one who sadly and unexpectedly died.
  • Martin starting a new job
  • Carol Anne starting the first of 6 courses of chemotherapy

…and this list is not exhaustive!  

Because, of course, there are also all those trivial things that make up the details of everyday life: laundry, shopping, vacuuming, yard maintenance, cleaning of kitchens and bathrooms, home maintenance and improvements (did I mention we are about to have solar panels installed?,) homework and exams, visiting and staying connected with friends and family, learning new patterns of eating and living, and so many more details that they all start to blur into that mosaic background that makes up all of our lives.

Through it all, I have been struck, as if with snowballs in the back of my head thrown by some perversely comic and cosmic angel, with the contradictions of our life right now. 

The first, biggest, and most overarching  contradiction is this: we are in the midst of some of the hardest times in our family’s life, and yet these are some of the best and closest times we have had as a family. We are more grateful for each other and our time together than at any other point, too.  As a family that has worked hard to be there for others, to be available and ready with advice or, a meal, or even just space to listen, we have suddenly found ourselves in need of help.  And the outpouring of love and support from our community, from all of you, has filled us with love and strength at a time when we have been at our weakest and most vulnerable.

Carol Anne is now on long-term disability, and I haven’t worked in almost 2 years. And so our time is a contradiction between having an abundance of available time, and being bound to an ever evolving and increasingly exhausting life of appointments, medications, exhaustion and recovery.

Which leads to the forever contradictory and centering experience of time.

Just before Carol Anne went into surgery, way back in the waning days of June, to have that pesky tumor removed, I looked at her and said: “I want 25.” We didn’t really know what was going on yet, beyond the fact that she had a brain tumor.  We barely knew enough at that point to have any good questions!  But one of the questions that kept throwing itself into my awareness was the question of time: how much of it did she have, did we have? We celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary this past June (one of the many things not included in the opening list!) just 17 days before that surgery. As she was being taken away from me to have cancer removed from her brain, I was absolutely certain that I was not ready to lose her.  I needed more time. “I want 25” was me saying that (and a lot more, but that’s for a different time) to her.

Between the surgery and the time we were finally told the specifics of the diagnosis, we lived in a kind of suspended time of not knowing: not knowing what to expect or how bad to expect it to be; not knowing, what we could safely hope for or what we could try to fight and strive for; not knowing what to research and learn about (an anti-anxiety activity for both of us.) It forced us to return to the moment, over and over, and to be grateful for that time.

But this didn’t mean we were always successful.  There were days, evenings, afternoons, when the awareness of all the time that might be taken from us was present and heavy.  Our plan was to grow old together, and now it looked like we could no longer look forward to those days, nor to so many of the others that we had planned for and imagined. It was an effort, in those moments, to let the anger and resentment and sadness and disappointment have their time – their moment – and then let them go, and return to the gratitude.

So, when we did receive the details of the diagnosis and her treatment and the prognosis, and the indicators all pointed to much more time than we had let ourselves hope for, it felt like an amazing gift. We were being given years  that we thought had been taken out of reach. And although the years may be many fewer than we had hoped for long ago in the before cancer days, from our new vantage point on time, years seemed so, so good.

(So, barring the unforeseen, it looks like we’re going to get our 25, although Carol Anne may still be going through the last of her chemo cycles at that time. In fact, we’ve set a new number as our anniversary goal, and if we make it there we will be satisfied, and we will take every year, every day, beyond that as bonus time.)

Included in this strange context of time is the contradiction in health that Carol Anne continues to experience.  At a time when Carol Anne has felt better and more herself than she has in years, if not decades, her cancer treatment is a strange game of introducing particles and chemicals into her system that make her feel worse in order to make her better. Between the enforced time away from work and taking “medicine” that makes her feel sick, she is having….well, we both are having to remind ourselves and each other that she has cancer. Brain cancer.  And the time she has to give to fighting the cancer now is so that we can have the years that we so desperately crave.

Which leads to the underlying contradiction – the contradiction between baffling surreality and sobering reality.  

My wife has brain cancer. Brain cancer!  This is not something real – this is a plot device in movies and shows to take a character or a plot in a different direction.  This is sad news that we hear about from celebrities and influencers. So discovering that it is real, and that it is residing in my wife’s brain inspires a disconnect from reality, a warping of what can and cannot be expected in life.  

And at the same time, the phrase “my wife is being treated for brain cancer” also inspires a sobering focus of energies. There is no cure, only treatment, and the prognosis is statistical, not specific. So, although there are good indicators and reasons to be hopeful, we really won’t know how effective the treatment will be until she’s gone through it.  And as she is now halfway through the first course of chemo chemicals, we are starting to learn how she reacts to the drugs. We are both figuring out what symptoms to pay attention to, what foods to prepare and how, and how to get through the tougher moments of the chemical war being waged in her body in the name of treatment.  

We are all living in contradictory times!  These are times of abandon and restraint, of acceptance and intolerance, of unshakeable certainty and baffling uncertainty, and so many other dichotomies energies in tension.  

These are the days when you hear more and more often: “Many things can be true at the same time.”

Academically, intellectually, this is easy to accept.

Psychologically, deep down in the soul, it is less easy. It takes intent, and practice.

And so I – we – practice.

As that slapstick angel continues to lob snowballs at my awareness, I call to mind that verbose practitioner of the written word, Charles Dickens, who once quipped:”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” He might have been on to something.

My father-in-law and close friend Robert Sims was on to something, too, when he taught me that the resolution to unavoidable contradictions is found in paradox.

How are we doing? We are doing paradoxically.  We are going through incredibly hard times very well. We are accepting time as it is given, and we are avariciously seeking more. We live with the gravity of the situation while we float and marvel at the strangeness of it all. And we look forward to the time we have with each other and with all of you, in all of its precious paradox.