The New Year

There's nothing like hanging up a new calendar to get you thinking about the year ahead. Well, that and a cancer diagnosis.

The irony of this whole ordeal is that as the end of 2013 started coming into view, Karen and I started thinking about where we would be in the next few years. We had one kid out of high school and another on course to graduate in a year and half. After that, what? We began to fantasize about a life as empty-nesters. What would that life look like? We weren't sure, but there were lots of options, all of them appealing in their way. About all that seemed certain would be that we'd get some truly enormous dogs and go to brunch way more. And maybe eat a big messy swath through Italy one spring. After 22 years of marriage we were feeling almost like newlyweds, looking forward to whatever shape our life might take.

So when the rug got yanked out from under us around Thanksgiving, all of that was lost. The future was still uncertain for me only waaaayyy more uncertain. While I'm old enough to know that you really can't plan the course of your life, I had felt reasonably secure that whatever lie ahead there would be one constant--Karen.  

For Karen, of course, her future is excruciatingly certain. The sense of loss she's grappling with is overwhelming in its enormity. There are no weddings, no college graduations, no big family Christmases at our new home with all the land and maybe a pool but definitely the two gigantic dogs. When your wife is sobbing "I would have been a great grandmother"...well, those are just hard times.

The reshaping of our family's future is sinking in with everyone. Tonight was a rough one for Miranda and she wound up crying in her mother's arms. While her mother's absence in her all aspects of her future was unbearable, she was especially upset at the idea that Karen wouldn't be there to help her pick her wedding dress. And how do you console her? As a parent your impulse is to say "No, we'll make it happen," but that won't work this time. There is no good way to spin the truth. That said, I promised that I'd help if/when that day came and I reminded her that I had infinitely better taste in clothing than her mother anyway.

In the end, we wound up laughing and Miranda lobbed her wadded up Kleenexes at me. Then she left to take her shower and go to bed. Karen and I hugged, I kissed her goodnight, and we continued drifting sadly into the next uncertain day.