Acceptance

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

When you were five,
lightning struck a distant barn
while you were climbing the old oak tree,
and you fell hard into its roots.

Your mother kissed your pale forehead
as they wheeled you away
down a hallway saturated with color
and whispered: "It will be alright."

But now you are alone,
except for death in his ragged coat,
in this white room that smells like pee,
and you have no mother here.

Tell yourself, as they take him away, say:
"Yes, they found a mass;
Yes, they think it's cancer;
No, everything is going to be alright."

---------------------------

I've finally reached the last stage of grief. 

1. Denial. 2. Anger. 3. Bargaining. 4. Depression. 5. Acceptance.

Many years ago, before we got married, Eric and I met with our bishop (ecclesiastical leader). He told us that marriage was a give-and-take experience. He said there would be periods of our lives when one of us would have to carry most of the weight, when the other was ill or had an intense period of work. That has been largely true for the last fourteen years. During my residency, Eric carried most of the parenting weight with Quinn. During his, I shouldered the burden. However, in the past year, I've been on a teeter-totter with all the weight on my side, and more and more cognitive load sliding into my lap. Initially, I treated it like one of these phases, anticipating it would end. But then,  I joined a Facebook group for partners of people with low-grade glioma. I explained that since his surgery, Eric is easily overwhelmed and overstimulated, frequently fatigued, and not able to solo parent three kids anymore, especially while juggling an intense job. And I asked if it will get better. 

The unanimous answer was not really. Turns out your frontal lobe is important for processing, dealing with kids, handling all these life things, and taking out a large chunk of it causes permanent changes. Everyone who responded to my Facebook post said their partner hadn't normalized, even with years, but their family had adjusted. 

It was actually very helpful, to hear that from other partners. It helped me move from stage 4 to 5 of grief. Because this period of me carrying most of the load isn't temporary. It's probably permanent now. Because Eric, although in remission, isn't just back to normal after having brain surgery on a very important part of the brain. He probably will never be able to work the number of hours he could have before. He will expend all of his cognitive abilities during the day, with limited left over when he gets home. He will become overwhelmed with our three banshees when they are being typical hyper kids (and our kids are definitely on the hyper end of the spectrum, even on a calm day, especially the older two). This is something that bothered me for months, as I slowly drowned while taking on more and more parenting/household responsibilities. But finally accepting that it is not a temporary situation actually really helped me to feel better and come up for air.

So, here we are, in our new equilibrium. MRIs every three months, Voranigo, and a brain that is 80%, but probably never totally back to normal. I don't know if Eric has reached the acceptance stage yet. I think he is still angry that he is not able to be the same doctor that he used to be. And admittedly, it's a harder pill to swallow for him. He is a brilliant man, and he hasn't lost any of his knowledge or problem solving, but his processing speed is slower and his ability to multitask is lower, and his capacity to deal with loss of sleep and simulation isn't the same, and likely never will be. If it were me, that would be harder to accept than the changes in our family dynamics. So I can't blame him for not being in the acceptance stage yet. Also, he has to grapple with his own mortality, and the possibility that every three months, something may change on that MRI. It's harder for him than for me.

So, regarding me, I'm in a better place. I've accepted that I will be carrying most of the family and parenting load. I've decided that is okay with me. I want to support Eric in having the best career and personal life he can have, and if that means I have to take on 90% of household tasks, it's a load I can bear. Maybe things aren't going to be the same, but they will eventually be alright. The kids will get older, and parenting will get easier. Balancing work and home life will get easier as they become more independent. They are all awesome, and worth giving that extra 110%. 

Now that I have accepted the changes in my life, I have started to try to adjust things to make things easier for me without leaning on Eric. I used a big chunk of GoFundMe to buy premade meals for 8 months. Now, I've stopped cooking for the most part, and as a result, my youngest is extremely picky, but it's a price I'm ok with paying that is solvable with careful diet monitoring (making sure she eats her one accepted food in each group every day) and Flinstones vitamins. We eat a lot of tacos, stir-fry, and spaghetti, and that's working for us. I've been working from home a lot because I don't have the energy or time to commute, and my boss has been very understanding. I took my family's offer to pay for a housekeeper, so I'm not doing all the cleaning myself anymore. I've started making Quinn actually help me with the dishes. 

And life will be okay, and we will be okay. It won't be the life I imagined for myself, but life never is exactly how we plan it. Thank God for modern medicine that is keeping Eric healthy. In the long run, things are so much better than they would have been twenty years ago, and I can accept the vestigial sucky consequences.

So I wanted to update people that I have now reached this place. I know the poem at the beginning is depressing, but I have mostly moved on from the sad place I was in when I wrote it. And Eric is healthy, and trudging through the end of residency, and I know that life will get easier, and that knowledge is a sweet thing. For now, I'm trying to soak up these days of my children's lives, because I know they won't come back. And our kids are all pretty awesome, so that's easy to do.

Onward and upward.  

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