I haven’t had a night like last night in awhile — a crying, despairing night of not knowing how things will turn out and taking the emotions (present and future!) of everyone — my son especially — on myself.
It’s brutal, folks, being a wife and mother with an incurable disease — treatable but incurable — and let me tell you that the incurable part of that is made very clear during oncologist visits. “When you come back,” “when you relapse,” “when the cancer comes back it’s unlikely to come back in the other breast,” are phrases I’ve all heard. The timelines. The guesses. The “I can give you x years,” said like maybe that’s a gift only it’s the worst thing imaginable or among the worst things imaginable. There are worse things, I’m sure.
All of this, and meantime I’m trying to explain why my son isn’t second best and the writing that I see explains why my words really don’t mean a damn. I understand this, I do.
This morning I feel a reprieve from Dawn, level-headed, clear-thinking Dawn, thank God for Dawn and her way with words and her sensibilities about the world and adoption and the way it all works. Second choice vs. Second Best explains why I need to let this go, that while I’m responsible for explaining how things unfolded, ultimately I’m not responsible for how Nate feels about all of it. She’s right. I can explain what happened and why and how I’m glad things turned out the way they did, but ultimately, I can’t re-do the past and I can’t undo what’s been done. His feelings are his alone and not for me to wholly take on myself. I know how much I love him. I hope he feels it. I so hope he feels it.
Sadly, for us there’s another layer because of my illness. I hope there’s not yet another layer with the “x years” that the oncologist predicts because this boy doesn’t need to lose another mother. I think it would be the cruelest thing for him to lose a second mother, but I may not have a say in the matter. We talk about “so-and-so fighting cancer” or whatever disease it is they have, but honestly, as I see it, we’re only doing what we have to. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing magical about what I’m doing except that I go to chemo every week and I ask for prayers and I try to stay close to my faith and I want to live. That’s about it, and frankly, people like that die every day. So if there’s to be any miracle here, it will be a divine one and the glory will be to God, not to me.
But anyways . . . . I thank you, Dawn, for giving me a healthy perspective on this. You’re right; we can tell our children our stories but ultimately, we can’t control how they process them and how they feel about them. In 20 years, maybe Nate will be here blogging about how he always felt second-best. *sigh* I’ll do what I can, but in the end, there is only so much I can do.
Mostly, I just want to be here for him in person.
That might be the hardest thing to accomplish . . . . .
so little of that is really up to me . . . .
