Morning After Blues/From My Head Down To My Shoes

I was so exhausted last night, as I seem to be every day now. That whole, "It's marathon not a sprint" expression is true, but only half so. It's a marathon all right. But I am sprinting all the way through, at least it feels that way. I was so tired, I barely described what was a remarkable meeting with our friend, a therapist yesterday, whose husband died in 2020 from PDAC.  Imagine sitting with a friend who just went through almost the same trauma you went through. She is spilling her guts about the disease. She is telling Jenny that she is dying, that she knew there was a turn when Jenny got her stent. She is telling stories about her husband's final days. She is sitting two or three feet from Jenny

Willow always makes things better.

on the ottoman, her legs crossed, Willow constantly jumping on her lap. Jenny is perfectly positioned in the corner of the sectional, playing with the remnants of her childhood blankey (caressing her blankey is a habit that she has had for as long as I have known her--doing it in public is a practice acquired in just the last few months), a beanie on her head, her eyes fixed on her lap. The expression on Jenny"s face is the same one a person gets when they have lost on a sure bet at the track for the third time.  She wasn't happy.

Each time the therapist asks Jenny questions, Jenny gives answers in a voice inexplicably redolent in defiance, as if a child being told to eat their dinner. Her answers demonstrate complete denial. In fact, the more the therapist tries to get through to Jenny, the further away she goes. In a voice, almost a whisper, full of sorrow and compassion, the therapist continually tries to reassure Jenny, to validate her fear of death, to impress upon her it's impending arrival, it's inevitability.

Our friend left our home defeated, clearly crestfallen. Returning to sit to the right of Jenny after showing our friend out, I waited for her to utter some profundity. I don't know why. After a meeting like that, I guess I thought reflection was inevitable, but it never came.  The anger she felt that we had this meeting was palpable. I went upstairs to get ready to take Abby to the movies. As I retreated upstairs, I could hear Jenny telling Amelia, her friend who was present for the last part of the discussion, that there was nothing new offered in the meeting that she hadn't been hearing all week. Fully armored in denial, she can't see through it's visor.  

In case there are any doubts about my true reflection of the meeting, or perhaps concerns over any misunderstanding I may have had about Jenny's position, I received this text from her last night while at Licorice Pizza with Abby:

Our friend the therapist addressed this idea of equating stopping chemo with "giving up" last night. Stopping chemo when it is no longer effective isn't quitting, it isn't giving up. Not at all. It is taking control away from the chemotherapy. Sometimes when you are dog paddling in the middle of a sea of inevitability and someone offers driftwood for you to float on, you see it as flotsam, and watch it drift on by as waves are crashing over your head and your bravado and resolve dissipate. 

I am heartbroken for Jenny. I am heartbroken for the girls. I am simply heartbroken.