Coping Mechanisms

For the record, I really wanted to call it "Cooping Mechanisms" because I love puns so much, but I decided to spare you. You're welcome.

Yes. We snuck out on Sunday. Jenny and I couldn’t take it anymore. We are both fighting our asses off every day to live with cancer, and we’ve done a great job so far. Then along comes this evil little Covid19, to scare us back into our safe little caves. So on Sunday, we washed our hands, jumped into the car, and drove to the adorable, quiet little Eden that is L.A. Burdick’s in Walpole, NH. We sipped tiny, perfect coffees and ate fresh, fancy pastries. We sat in this empty corner talked like only two cancer patients can talk — I hate it when… If one more person says ______, I’m going to lose it… I’m terrified about ______…

Yeah, we’re terrified already. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my friend Kri died on March 9th. Her diagnosis came a year after mine. She’s earned her own post, so I’m not going to tell you much more about her now, but I can tell you that visiting her in hospice threw me into a wicked tailspin.

When I’m at my worst, one of my favorite things to do is to focus on plans. Line up things to look forward to. I booked our hotel for this weekend’s trip to visit Temple to see if that’s where Max might want to spend the next four years of his life.

Now today, I’m spending my day on hold with Stay Alfred, whose website says that I won’t get my money back, but I’m welcome to take a partial loss if I reschedule our visit for later in 2020. (If you would like to tweet them to let them know that it’s customary to be a little bit more flexible with cancellation policies during worldwide pandemics, you can do so here.)

Hey, it turns out that cancelling plans is a lot less therapeutic than making them.

I’m knitting more. I usually only do it on Sunday mornings (it helps me focus on the sermon). I might actually finish Dalton’s gift in time for his birthday in July. You’ll be among the first to know when it’s done. Maybe he’ll get his own blog or an Instagram account.

I bought a book. A real book. With pages and a dust jacket. During chemo, the visual-motor movements of reading makes me queasy and I usually end up closing my eyes and falling asleep almost immediately. It’s hard to maintain interest in a book that you read one paragraph at a time.

The dogs like to ride in the car. And Bo, our hospice guest has been promised the most delightful life we can give him. So there may be a long, destination-free drive in our near future. He should definitely see Dog Mountain, don’t you think?

Hey, have you ever tried to date as a 40-something terminally ill mom of two during a pandemic? Don’t.

The World Health Organization would probably tell me that it is a bad idea to continue to welcome my kids’ friends into my house. They might even tell me that my kids should stay with their dad until the worst of this passes. But if they told me that, I would respectfully laugh in their faces. Sorry, WHO, but I need my people. And I need my people’s people. So I put up a nice little “wash your hands” sign on the door (thank you, Otelah, for the scrapbooking tutorial last year), and invite them in (no more than seven at a time).

This unknowing is terrible. It’s so hard to cope. Thanks for being out there. Maybe you would be willing to share your best (or worst) coronavirus pun in the comments.

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