Angie Kinghorn

Where the hell I’ve been

Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.  I’m ok with that, since this isn’t an actual job for me, but since I have virtually dropped off the internet for the last few weeks, it seems appropriate to tell y’all what’s been going on. 
In a nutshell: my husband got sick the Thursday before Halloween.  Sick enough to go to the doctor, sick enough to not be able to sleep, sick enough to take narcotic painkillers.  This is a man who has to be on death’s own doorstep to take even two Advil.  Naturally, I thought he must be dying.  His doctor, on the other hand, thought he had a kidney stone, and sent him home on Friday to wait out the weekend with pain meds, copious amounts of water, and a sieve in which to urinate until nature took care of the problem.  
I pretended not to worry (translation: I tried to hide as much of my anxiety as possible and made myself busy nagging him to rest, to drink more water, to actually use the sieve in the bathroom, etc.), but I became fearful as the weekend ticked by and his pain got worse.  The hubster is the kind of guy who will gut it out through anything.  He’d go to work with his arm half amputated, saying, “It’s only a flesh wound!” 
So seeing him doubled over, groaning in pain, and getting up from the couch like a pregnant woman…well, it scared the hell out of me.  
But not as much as his attitude Monday morning, when no kidney stone had appeared, and when one of his testicles was suddenly so swollen and tender he wouldn’t let me touch it.  Never mind gutting it out, the hubster stayed home from work and called the doctor until, on his third call, he finally talked to the guy and was referred to a urologist.  Who couldn’t see him until the next day.
The next day, he was still in agony, and had an appointment with the urologist, followed by an ultrasound and a CT scan.  The day after that, he had an appointment at 8:30 a.m. to discuss the test results with the doctor.  I offered to go, but the hubster told me to take the kids to preschool and not worry about it.
So I was suspicious when he called me right before 9 and told me he’d changed his mind.  He wanted me there for the appointment after all.
“What’s wrong?”  I asked.  “I know you’ve already seen him.  What did he tell you?”
“Nothing.  He’s running late.  And I just decided I’d rather have you here for the appointment.”
“You’re a terrible liar.  Doctors don’t run late first thing in the morning.  What’s wrong?”
He almost sounded normally exasperated as he replied, “Nothing.  Seriously.  Just come down here after you drop the kids off.”
I knew.  I knew in my heart something was not good.  I knew from his voice that he was keeping it from me.
But I didn’t know I’d be sitting with him twenty minutes later, gripping his hand while the urologist spoke to us about how he was virtually certain that the problem was not a kidney stone.  It was most likely cancer.  Testicular cancer.  And he’d booked an OR for 11 a.m. the next day to remove the affected testicle and the tumor that took up an estimated 80% of it, according to the ultrasound.
“Wait,” I said.  “Back up a minute.  Tomorrow?  Can we get a second opinion before we do this?  You said you’re not sure it’s cancer?  What if it’s not?”
The doctor was kind, but firm, as he explained to us that yes, we could get a second opinion, but that any doctor in the world would do the surgery based on the test results.  And that the test results indicated time was of the essence.  We couldn’t afford to wait even a week.
Things get a bit blurry from there.  I remember staring down at my husband’s arm.  He was wearing my father’s watch.  His memories.  His legacy.  His death, barely 13 months old, shone from my husband’s wrist as I gripped his hand, and listened to the all-too-familiar language of malignancies and tumors.
Somehow the demons stayed at arm’s length until my in-laws arrived and took the children home with them.  But they howled through my head the rest of that night and the next day at the hospital.
For now, I’ll leave it at that and tell you only that the surgery went well.  The pathology came back in five days (it can take far longer), and while yes, it is cancer, it’s a seminoma, the most easily treatable type of testicular cancer.
The hubster was ordered to stay home from work the rest of that week, and I watched him  attempt to rest.  Both of us wondered where things would go from here, though the urologist told us he was confident that the next thing would be radiation.  To decide on a plan, we had to go see an oncologist, but the soonest we could get in was the Monday after Thanksgiving.
He was right.  The oncologist recommended radiation, so the hubster’s due to start a two and a half week course of it soon.  They hope to have it finished by Christmas, and then all indications are that he will be just fine.
“Just fine” is not a part of the lexicon I can understand anymore.  I’m so happy things aren’t worse, and I know how much worse it could have been.  But the voice in my head watches everyone else (including the hubster, now), walk around as if everything is just fine, and screams, “This cannot be happening!”
This is the recurrent nightmare I have dared voice only recently to my therapist and family; the nightmare in which something happens to my husband.  Just like something has happened to the rest of the men in my family.  He’s the only man with us when we gather around the table for Christmas dinner, and it’s not lost on anybody that we dine with ghosts. 
So that’s where I’ve been.  Wrestling demons.  Not wanting to write for fear of what might spill onto the page.  
But don’t worry, because the logical part of me, and all of everyone else, knows that everything will be just fine.  I want to believe it, and I will believe it, but for me, it’s gonna take some time.

Where I’m from

I am from a hill that seemed like a mountain, from Motown tunes and Lexington–style barbecue.

I am from the two-story red brick near the fire tower, a yard filled with clover, a home filled with beach music, the haunting scent of Halston drifting in my mother’s wake. 
I am from the creamy white blossoms of a magnolia, bright bursts of azaleas, rattlers lurking in the rocks, the willow that no longer weeps in the front yard.
I am from a family of square jaws and missing men, from Grants and Jedidiah Calhoun and the Hoods of Cornelia.
I am from men struck down by cancer and women who love them – and weep for them – long after they’re gone.
I am from “You can do anything,” and “We love you no matter what.“
I am from Episcopal acolytes with winged robes, from embroidered cushions at the communion rail, from Rite Two of the Holy Eucharist, beginning on page 355 in the cracked spines of the Books of Common Prayer resting behind the pews next to dusty Bibles. 
I’m from a land of cotton, red clay, and tobacco barns, a land forged by men who fought the Yanks and whose great-grandfathers lined up against the redcoats, where stone sentries stand guard in front of every courthouse in case they ever come back.
I am from a land of mystical and resourceful women, whose hands shape their children with both love and thunder, whose sublime power is masked by cloying words. 
I am from the great-grandfather who drove a Model T up courthouse steps in Sylva, from a father who taught me how to hit the x-ring, from a line of hearts that bleed Carolina blue and crave Gamblers from the Rat. 
I am from Confederate discharge papers framed on a grasscloth wall, from twangs and drawls, deviled eggs and bleeding rings of cranberry salad, from the rusted-out pickups of the Blue Ridge.  I am from faith and family, served with hushpuppies and cold beer.

Flashback

It’s not like I expected this week to be the most fun of my life.  
Ugh.
This coming Monday, September 20th, will be the first anniversary of my father’s death.  Throughout the grieving process, people have told me how hard anniversaries of all kinds can be, but the brutality of this one year mark has shocked me.
Memories are supposed to dim with time, but the flashbacks I’ve had over the past month are anything but fuzzy.  My allergies are so bad I can’t smell a thing, but when my mind takes me back to the hospital a year ago, the smells are so sharp that I cringe.  I can feel textures, hear sounds, and even the muted colors are vivid.
And then Wednesday, our family’s beloved 15 year old dog became suddenly ill, stricken with an extraordinarily painful bladder tumor.  So I spent the afternoon with her at the vet’s and held her as he pushed the plunger on a syringe, sending her to a peaceful end.  
There was not enough Kleenex in this world.  All I could think was why, why, Lord, why could it not have been this easy for my father?  Why the twelve years of suffering?  Why the agonizing death?  Why, dammit, why?
And I’ll never know.  But in that little dog’s death, I did receive a strangely beautiful gift.  In that death, I was able to do what I couldn’t for my father.  I was able to hold her, comfort her, and make sure she didn’t hurt.  
God knows I’ve needed to cry, and most of the time I try not to.  It tends to scare the children.  But they weren’t with me in that office, so I sobbed.  As the tears fell, something else did, too.  Something like a wall between my brain and a deep pool of grief.  It was a profound catharsis.  Now I feel drained, and my mind has gone into what I think of as protective grief mode.  When things get to be too much, I go to sleep.  Weird, I know, but apparently it’s my body’s defense mechanism.  It happened for a long time last year, and I wasn’t expecting it to come back, but here we are.
I’m sorry for the lack of posts this week, but it’s hard to be funny when you’re asleep at the keyboard.
While I go take my nap, y’all go over to Pretty All True for the awesome post of the day.  Tip: refrain from eating or drinking while reading.  Kris is funny as hell and I will not be held liable for computers sprayed with Diet Coke.

Firsts

It’s been 9 months since my father died.  As someone whose friends seem to be having babies every other week, 9 months seems significant.  It’s enough time to grow a human being, but is it enough time to get over the loss of one?  

In a word: no.

I had hoped it might be enough time for me to grow a brain that can comprehend this world without him.  Some days it seems ok.  Memories elicit a smile along with the ache.  But time, while healing, is also brutal, and since his death, holidays and special events have hit with the force of a late-summer hurricane.

Dad was there for all my firsts, for all my sister’s firsts, for my children’s firsts: birthdays, Thanksgivings, Christmases, anniversaries, my first Mother’s Day.  It seems wrong for the calendar to keep moving without him.

But it does, and it is a struggle to remember the joy that should accompany these new firsts.  To weep through happy occasions would seem to dishonor my father–he wouldn’t have wanted his memory to cast sorrow on days that should be joyous.  Yet dancing doesn’t exactly seem appropriate, either.  

My first birthday without Dad was two months and one day after he died.  It was not happy.  I burst into tears when my in-laws sang and brought over a lighted cake.  Christmas was different—we were hosting my family, so I held it together using the time-honored tradition of stuffing my feelings down somewhere in the vicinity of my appendix and then attempting to pickle them with large quantities of alcohol.

Then we visited my in-laws after the New Year.  Their tree was still up, but so was ours, so I didn’t pay it any mind.  Until one morning when my mother-in-law announced that it was time for presents.  It was a surprise Christmas part II.  We’d sent our gift to them in advance, and I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of a Christmas-like event.  Sounds of wrapping paper tearing yanked forth sobs, even the ones that were down there by my appendix, soaking in bourbon with leftover fruitcake, and I tried to stuff them down again, but my soul was like a floodplain, soaked and unable to absorb any more.  I tried to at least cry quietly, but my brother-in-law noticed.

“What’s wrong?”  he whispered, trying to be inconspicuous.  I almost laughed.  My brother-in-law may be a psychiatrist, but he’s still a man and from Mars.  

“I just really miss my dad,” I mouthed back.  He still looked a bit confused.  A lot of people do.  It had been a whole three months since his death—shouldn’t I have been fine?

Since then, we’ve had my mother’s birthday, Mother’s Day, what would have been my parent’s 39th anniversary, my sister’s birthday, and Father’s Day.  The last three occasions were stacked up in a period of eight days.  Each one was difficult, and memories I thought were totally parsed have floated back to the surface.  

I don’t know how to prepare for the nebulous, blindingly hot days of this summer, when, a year ago, I was spending almost all my weekends at my parents’ house, watching Dad get weaker and weaker.  I truly dread Labor Day and the first anniversary of Dad’s death.  He collapsed and was hospitalized on Labor Day last year, and died two weeks later.  

As my father would say, I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.  In the meantime, this weekend is the 4th of July.  And I’m going to concentrate really hard on memories of running around our front yard with my sister, waving sparklers at the fireflies while my parents watched and laughed.  I’m going to try to remember that time when our family was whole and young and healthy, and be grateful to God that these memories are mine to treasure.