If you’ve ever seen Miss Congeniality, you may be familiar with William Shatner’s character saying, “I wake up every morning, I look in the mirror, and I say, ‘who is that old man wearing my pajamas?'” True, right? Time passes; we hurry from activity to activity. We count down to the weekend. We talk about doing some fun thing “soon.” Yes, of course, we know life is temporary but we won’t be old for a loooong time. In fact, our definition of OLD changes as we age. In your 40s? Suddenly 50 seems like early middle age. And then, CANCER — the disease that teaches us the value of whatever time we have.
We are completely committed to curing his cancer but we know both that we may not be successful AND that everything has changed even if we are. Ken’s been worrying about how to transfer his household tasks to me to ensure that I can manage if our journey together ends before we’re old. Does that seem fatalistic? It’s comforting for him to ensure that I know the passwords for all our financials, that I can fix our WIFI, that I know the contractors who help us maintain a 120-year-old, 3-story Victorian house, that I can pay the bills, etc.
Before he started chemo, he showed me how to clean the turtle’s aquarium. The turtle is HIS. There’s no question about that. After 4+ years together, Ken and Survive-E (I call him Turtle E. Turtle but he doesn’t answer.) have bonded, as much as a turtle can bond with a human. I am embarrassed to admit that I find Survive-E … well … wiggly. I just can’t pick him up. Twice, I’ve cleaned the aquarium but only after one of our sons has removed the turtle for me. Seriously, I transfer spiders safely to the outdoors, clean up cat vomit, hosed down a dog and kennel after consumption of a stolen ham bone ended badly. But I cannot pick up Survive-E. If I were a superhero, I guess we know what my weakness would be.
Ken is a great teacher but we only work on transferring his household tasks for short periods. It’s overwhelming emotionally for me to think about doing all this alone. We met sometime between the age of the dinosaurs and the invention of sliced bread (technically, in 1988); literally we’ve spent more than half my life together.
