The next deep breath

I sat slouched with the car in park. Ryan sat quietly next to me in the passenger seat, watching an existential crisis unfold. I stared at an opportunistic seagull perched on a light post, that waited for another exhausted mom to drop something halfway edible while she loaded her trunk in the parking lot.

With eyes fixated and blurred with tears, rhetorically, I asked, "How? How is this our life? I don't recognize anything here. What in the actual hell?"

After a long pause, Ryan, in all his impaired emotional intuition, replied, "The Apache Persuasion Hold! That's the hell!"

Tears erupted into laughter. 

(If you haven't watched The Office, move on)

In the time since his prognosis, we have found, in the most harrowing way, that this ache is chronic. That unextraordinary moment in the parking lot sums up our grief quite well. It's unnervingly and, yet, unsurprisingly erratic. I may be baggy eyed, subdued, and my soul bone tired but, of all the things Ryan's tumor(s) has brought us, dark, ill-timed humor is my absolute favorite.

These days I teeter between "to do's," the time this anvil of grief demands of each of us, and everything/everyone else. With no intent to harm, many conversations don't take place, many questions go unanswered, and many replies sit idly as drafts. Finding the energy has been a challenge, and finding the words? Well, that's been darn near impossible. For the record, we don't expect anyone else to have them either.

Despite all these years of visits and scans under our belts, the investments at this stage are mountainous and more foreign than I expected. We have gone from living life in increments between appointments, to navigating everything that now happens in between. Concurrently with the falling leaves, smokeless air, and transparent views, these deformed, exacting cells have become more glaring. It ranges anywhere from convulsing seizures, to crippling fatigue, to struggling to read a tape measure. There isn't much of a rhyme to it yet and there may never be, but the reason is clear.

At this point, we have more support than we could have hoped or prayed for, but we are still met with these unavoidable moments where Ryan, myself, and Christ are the only ones in the room when something goes south. The very hands I want on my shoulders comforting me are the ones trembling in mine. It's hard to accept that all I can do is hold Ryan, tell him I love him, and hope for the next minute.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:3-5

After big waves of pain, every night, without fail, the boys desperately pray for God to "take Daddy's tumors away." Hearing them cling and struggle between belief in God's healing power to knowing they are not exempt from hard things just knocks the breath out of me. The verse above helps unclench my muscles. We are, in fact, recipients of this saintly guarded, imperishable, undefiled, unfading, resurrected, living HOPE that is teaching us to breathe deeper, in spite of what we can't trace or sort out. 

Between the paperwork, my full voicemail box, and the loop of obnoxious hold music running through my head, I'm managing to put one foot in front of the other, no matter how numb they feel underneath me, only because of His hope in my lungs.

"When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; He brought me into a spacious place." Psalm 118:5

I know that, someday, sleep will be restorative again. Someday the waves will get smaller. Someday we'll feel less isolated. But for now I pray for more time and more moments to hold. I pray for spring.

Copyright 2021->Renee Sunberg