This Is Not Business As Usual

It’s been 3 months since Kevin passed and a year almost to the day that we found out about his tumor. I was with him in the hospital that entire first night as he got scanned and poked and looked at worriedly. But after those first days, in between appointments and teary conversations, I went back to work. I tried my best to be fully present at work and with Kevin. I tried my best to keep up our routine and manage the everyday with these new challenges. Pretty quickly it started to feel almost regular, a meeting and then a doctor appointment. Physical therapy and teleworking. It’s weird how quickly your brain and body want to get back to business as usual. Is it a coping mechanism? A form of denial? I don’t know. I think working helped me to feel in control of things when everything at home was so out of control. At each step along the way we adapted and created a new normal. Making it feel "usual" seemed like the only way to cope with such life changing events. But keeping it "usual" got harder, more appointments, more decisions, more side effects, less of our old life. Then I got sick. What does business as usual even mean when you’re dealing with couples’ cancer?

For us it was alternating chemo weeks. I’d go one week and Kevin the next. In between and when I felt ok, I worked. I told myself that I was working because we needed to financially, which was 100% true. But two things can be true at the same time. Maybe I was also holding on to the last place where things were literally business as usual. Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to be home where so many things were hard and sad. Maybe I wanted to be somewhere I could fix things. Two things can be true at the same time. The flip side of that coin is that I had slowed quite a bit from the beginning of this all. I sit here today wondering if I had not gotten sick would I have slowed down enough to appreciate Kevin’s last months? Don’t get me wrong, I was sicker than a dog, nothing about that was fun, but at least I was at home holding my husband’s hand. I quelled the nausea during those weeks sitting outside, listening to the birds and feeling the sun with Kevin. 

Kevin’s last appointment was on October 1st. The news was not good. There was nothing more that could be done. 10 months of trying to keep up the status quo fell apart. There was no doubt that I needed to be away from work altogether, but I still had so much anxiety and worry leading up to saying it out loud. "Boss- this is not business as usual." Ultimately my worrying and even my absence from work became moot. Things were changed. I was changed. All the things I was returning to- my home, my life, my work, would not be what they were before.

So here I am months later. There is no business as usual. How can there be without Kevin? How can there be after a double mastectomy. There is still the mundane, the have-to’s, the routine. There are still holidays, bills, phone-calls and groceries. But I don’t think there will ever be business as usual ever again.

Photo credit: http://www.instituteb.com/