Thoughts and prayers for the non-cancerous spouse. When I hung up the phone, turned to Bob and said, “It’s cancer,” he moved to hug me. And I said, “You’re clammy, get away.”
He seems to be doing better now, after the news has sunk in and we’re clear on the next steps. Those first couple days were not good. The only significant loss he’s experienced has been the death of the two cats he moved from New York. But this is more serious: he has grown accustomed to having me tell him what to do every minute of every day. He has entirely lost the ability to survive in the wild.
The only time I’ve cried in the past week was at the thought of leaving Bob. I’ve been close enough to death to know that it’s not so bad for the person doing the dying (I was going to say, “It’s not the end of the world,” but it definitively is). But I still don’t want to go. We have a pretty fun time, and I’m not ready for that to stop. And the idea that Bob would have no one to scream “What the fuck, where are you going? You remember we have to stop at the drug store, right?” when he takes a left instead of a right out of our driveway, is unbearable.
Guess I’ll have to stick around.