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“Was it easier to walk away than to face whatever might be coming for her?”
“At the time, yes. Now, not so much.”
“Nothing you’ve done can’t be undone, Gage.”
“I don’t know if I can do it. I thought I could. Iris made me believe I could, but this has shown me just how fucked up I still am. It wouldn’t be fair to subject her or the kids to that.”
“You’re not fucked up. You’re too close to it to see the progress, but I see it. When I first met you, you were nothing like you are now. You hardly said a word. Your sadness was the first thing anyone saw when they met you. But over time, you’ve come so far from who you were then. These days, you laugh, you smile, you love, you write, you contribute, you support other widows on their journeys. You’re being incredibly unfair to my dear friend Gage by saying you’re still too fucked up to make a go of this thing with Iris.”
She’ll never know what her words mean to me. “What does it say about me that the second things went a tiny bit sideways, I cut and run?”
“It says you’re scared for her and yourself. It says you’re human. It says that after what you’ve been through, your first impulse is to hide from anything that can ever hurt you like that again. It says that you care so much for Iris that the thought of anything happening to her can set you back on your grief journey. It says all those things and so many others.”
“I do care for her that much. I love her. And the kids.”
“I know you do, which is why this health scare has sent you reeling.”
“I can’t handle it, Christy, but I also can’t handle losing her.”
“You have to decide which you can’t handle more—the possibility of losing her tragically, which we both know all too well can happen thousands of different ways when we least expect it, or losing the chance to love her and her kids, to build a life with them. The way I see it, you’re choosing to lose her preemptively because that’s easier than loving her.”
Her stark words bring the issue into stunning clarity. I can either be so afraid of losing Iris to some sort of tragedy that I lose her anyway, or I can love her and build a life with her and the kids. Christy is right, though. I can’t have both those things at the same time.
“This has helped. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Can I say one more thing?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve enjoyed the way happiness looks on you, my friend. It’s given me hope that I might someday find what you have with Iris. I’d hate to see you lose her and all the hard-won progress that made it possible for you to love her in the first place.”
“I’d hate that, too.”
“We’re all going to die, Gage. Some of us sooner than we should. We’ve had an up-close-and-personal view of what that’s like, and it’s only natural to want to avoid it in the future. But you can’t be so afraid of loss that you forget to live what’s left of your life, you know?”
“Yeah, I do. And you’re right. It does come down to a choice, and I’d choose her every day, no matter what.”
“Then you need to tell her that and make her understand that you ran because you love her too much to bear the thought of anything ever happening to her. She’ll understand. How could she not? She’s been there, too. She knows.”
“I’ll tell her. Thank you so much for this. It was just what I needed to hear.” At some point during my conversation with Christy, the tears have dried up, and new resolve has set in. I need Iris and her kids in my life. I need the hope, joy and happiness they’ve brought me to survive whatever comes next, even if that’s a battle for Iris’s life. I’m here for it, and I need to tell her that.
As soon as possible.
27
IRIS
I’m not quite sure how I managed to fake my way through a breezy chat with my mom when I got home with groceries or how I managed to deal with the kids for the remainder of that very long day when every minute felt like an hour.
With them in bed, I pour a huge glass of wine that I drink most of before refilling my glass. I wish I had something stronger in the house, but we drank all the good stuff at the Wild Widows Christmas party. So I’m stuck with wine. I stand at the island in my kitchen, staring out in the darkness in the backyard, and drink my wine while trying not to think about anything other than getting through this minute and the next one until I hear from my doctor.
I’ll be certifiably insane if the wait is more than a day or two.
Thank God the kids go back to school tomorrow. Then I can roll up into the fetal position until I get the call.
I think about Kinsley and how her husband, Rory, died of pancreatic cancer at forty-two, Naomi, who lost her fiancé, David, after a brutal two-year battle with lymphoma, and Wynter, who lost her young husband, Jaden, to bone cancer. They’ve been right where I am now, waiting to hear news that might change their lives forever. I could reach out to any of them for advice on how to cope with waiting for test results, but it feels selfish to ask them to relive their trauma to help me through mine.
Any of them would do it for me. I’m sure of that, but I can’t bring myself to ask them. It’s sobering to realize that every day, thousands of people around the world are stuck in this hellish purgatory of waiting to hear if they have cancer or some other horrible disease.
