Death, A Love Story

My six-month meditation intensive included practicing twice a day for an hour in the morning and before bed. I would start my day in the darkness before the kids got up and would end it in darkness with John sleeping peacefully by my side as I sat cross-legged in our bed. I kept a journal nearby to write down insights and understandings gleaned from being silent with my breath or with the roller coaster of emotions that arose. Tera’s incident at the pool ripped something open in me and the roots of it went into shadowy places. Before then, I would scratch the surface but didn’t allow myself to go deeper; now I was. Every day during my practice, I would open just a little more, building the capacity to be with challenging emotions and heal ancestral trauma. The work I was doing wasn’t easy, but it prepared me for the 8-year crucible I was about to be initiated into. On the morning of December 22nd, 2013, I left John with the kids to go for a quick jog with our dog Whiskey. Our beloved Bacon, the dog John and I adopted when we were in the city, as many couples do, naively thinking it would somehow prepare us for parenthood, had passed the year before. Once we settled into our new suburban digs, we eagerly adopted yet another scruffy wire-haired terrier rescue named Whiskey and he loved to run. So, I took him on a loop through the hilly streets of our neighborhood and returned about 45 minutes later. In the living room, the Christmas tree was decorated with glass ornaments and multicolored lights and the scent of cinnamon and pine hung in the air. I could hear Tera happily singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to herself on the potty, and in the office, John and Tanner were stretched out on the floor playing Candy Land. The kids loved that game. John and I would spend hours with them shuffling the little plastic ginger men through the Chocolate Swamp and Licorice Forest. I plopped down on the couch to catch my breath and admire the tree with its hodgepodge of ornaments. Suddenly, I heard a strange choking sound followed by Tanner screaming, “Something’s wrong with Daddy! Something’s wrong with Daddy!” I raced into the office where Tanner flew up and hid behind my legs. On the floor, John was writhing, with his eyes rolled back just showing the whites and his body contorted into a grotesque bridge. Only his head and feet touched the ground. The entire middle of his body was pulled towards the ceiling, his stiffened hands jutting out like claws. It looked like a grizzly scene from The Exorcist. For a moment, I froze and was jolted back moments later when I heard both kids screaming. Tanner still clung to my legs while Tera shrieked from the toilet, “Mommy! What’s happening? Why is Tanner yelling?” Thank God, from the bathroom, she couldn’t see the horror unfolding a few feet away. I quickly scooped her up and told both kids to stay on the couch while I called 911. The dispatcher waited on the phone with me as John’s body continued to convulse. At the time, I thought he was having a heart attack, and, in my mind, I blamed all the red meat he was eating on his frequent business trips to Dallas and Austin for work. It’s funny the things that pass through your head when you’re trying to make sense of total upheaval. Slowly, his body settled and he looked at me with bewildered, imploring eyes. He was utterly exhausted, confused, and had no memory of what had happened. His only recall was that his right arm felt tingly, then went numb, before everything went black. Amazingly, John was on the floor with Tanner when the whole thing happened. If he had been standing, he could have knocked himself unconscious, or worse yet, if the seizure had happened two hours earlier while he was driving back from Target to buy stocking stuffers for the kids, he could have killed himself and anyone else near him on the road. As it was, he had bruises on his arms and knuckles and a pretty good bump on the head from thrashing around. When the paramedics arrived, they tried to get him to go in the ambulance to the ER, but John stubbornly refused. He said he felt fine, just a little sleepy. At that moment, there was no convincing him to leave with the emergency crew. He sat on the floor of the office with his head in his hands with the brightly colored rectangle playing cards from Candy Land strewn all over the carpet. I could see the turmoil on his face as he struggled to remember what happened. I explained to him how alarming the experience had been for the kids and me and begged him to let me take him to the hospital. He finally acquiesced and we went to the ER. Several hours later, after an x-ray, a CT scan, and a brain MRI, the doctor came in and gave us the news. Sitting on the side of the hospital bed, I was holding John’s hand when we learned that there was a mass in John’s lung as well as a mass in his brain. A biopsy of the lung would likely reveal if the two were related, and the procedure had already been scheduled for later that same day. It was that serious. We looked at each other in disbelief, not even remotely comprehending what we had just heard. The words “potentially cancer” hung in the air like a bad smell. The doctor apologized as if he were personally responsible for John’s state, and the grave look in his eyes irritated me. Why was he sorry? Sorry for what? It couldn’t possibly be that bad. Could it?