Shortly after my parents died in 2017, I nearly lost custody of my dog, Zoe, in
my divorce. When we were reunited, I remember telling her firmly, “You cannot
die now,” even though she had just turned 15.
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Not long after,
the vet told me that new lab work indicated kidney failure.
I was quite glad
then that Zoe could not talk, at least not in the traditional sense. We had no
painful discussions about quality-of-life issues or end-of-life concerns.
I approached her
final chapter with intention and indulgence, which is to say I followed her
lead. I fed her whatever and whenever she wanted. I let her decide whether we
would go for short walks or longer ones. Before I went to bed, I made sure Zoe
had settled into hers. Even as I prepared to lose her, I found myself exulting
in our days together. When she died, I consoled myself with the thought that
she was never mine to begin with; I was lucky to have known her; we only have
anyone we love for a short time.
As it turns out,
it’s much easier to practice spiritual detachment from a
Jack Russell terrier
who is gone than from my younger sister, Julie, who is here, and called later
that same year to tell me she had ovarian cancer.
It was Stage 4,
she said, as bad as it gets. Julie was 55, a lawyer and executive, a wife, and
the mother of two daughters, 17 and 21. People with her diagnosis are only 31
percent as likely as those without cancer to live an additional five years. A
surgeon explained that the median life expectancy for someone with her
diagnosis was about five years. Meaning, half of patients live less than five
years, half more.
Five years. Just
five years — maybe — left with my co-conspirator, my true other half. Julie is
the baby of our family, five years younger than me and three years younger than
our brother, Jay. The three of us are best friends, closer still since Julie
got sick, but she and I have our own history.
When my husband
left me five years ago, Julie flew from New York to North
Carolina to help me
through those first scary days. She kept our favorite old TV shows on, knowing
it would make me feel safe and like a kid again, while she scrutinized my
investment accounts line by line so she could announce, after too many episodes
of “Bewitched,” that I was financially OK.
She started
treatment immediately and gradually entered what many cancer patients call “the
loop” — periods of treatment, remission, and recurrence that then start all
over again. It was terrible and manageable.
In the meantime,
as with Zoe, I focused on indulgence and intention. Our family rented a beach
house in Rhode Island, a shingled cottage reminiscent of the house where we had
spent childhood summers. I traveled from North Carolina. Julie and her family
came from
New Jersey, and Jay hauled his from Connecticut. After the vacation,
which included competitive canoeing, daily cook-offs, and a raucous game of
Hearts in which Julie was definitely eyeing Jay’s cards, Julie sent an email to
the adults. “I sat at the house one night with you all there and imagined the
scene with me just faded from the landscape,” she began.
“It was actually
a comforting feeling knowing that I either was going to stay a part of this
scene for real or be remembered in stolen thoughts and pangs of sweet
remembrance and ribbing (hopefully)! Like, if Julie was here she would be
‘shooting the moon’ (ha!). From time to time I feel as though I’m living
between the immortal and real worlds. It definitely lets me enjoy the moments
with my favorite people (like you all :) on weeks such as this one! And the
longer away from the last or next CT scan the better!”
Looking back, I
recognize the gift in that email: She was giving us directions, almost a script,
for how to go on without her. In the moment, though, I volleyed back a
reassuring response: She was always on our minds wherever she was!
Then, after four
years, the loop no longer held her. A
clinical trial last October offered hope,
only to dash it within eight weeks. A new chemo regimen held out the
possibility of remission, which didn’t happen. Julie and I planned a trip to
Australia and New Zealand for this fall, the five-year mark, but I didn’t count
on it.
Julie, always a
kidder, began to joke about dying, here and there, seeming to invite a set of
conversations I did not want to have. It had not been five years yet. I was not
ready.
But I had
learned during my mother’s bout with lung cancer to follow up on such openings.
I remember once Mom asked, “Will it be painful to die?” and I replied, “What
would you like for dinner tonight, Mom?”
With Julie, I
wanted to do better, so I followed her lead. She, Jay, and I began to have a
series of talks about finances, medical decisions and what “the end” might be
like. She was focused and calm. I hated every minute. But what I really hated
was the virulent cancer.
Julie just
turned 60, and even beyond the loop, she is very much alive. She is cycling on
Long Island with her best friend, still planning trips to locales domestic and
foreign, researching a
Hail Mary clinical trial. This past May the entire
family spent a week at Nags Head, North Carolina, trapped in a creaky old
house, while a nor’easter swirled around us. We cooked. We played card games.
No one cheated! (Not even Julie.)
But her blood
work looks increasingly ominous, she naps more, and we are not going to
Australia and New Zealand this fall. Instead, I visit as often as I can, to
make as many memories as possible.
As year four
becomes year five, I am preparing, finally, to lose Julie, while exulting in
our days together. Some nights, as she shuffles the cards, I want to grab her
hand and say, “You cannot die now.”
But I know
better.
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