The Cancer Patient's Wife

The life of the wife amd the strife

There are many days when I feel sad and useless. Many nights where I’ll curl up alone. Many months were you feel cold and alone. There are the happy times - though few and far between. I’m mostly alone, mostly wasting away by my window coffee in hand and the news playing softly in the living room.  You’d think I’d never married, you’d think I lived here all alone, an old hag with no point in being alive, except to just live.  You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. 

You’d think  that being the cancer patient’s wife would be an easy job, you’d figure there was no way that we have to deal with the same that they do. I’d agree with that, we have to deal with more.  Nobody really understands what it is like to be the spouse of someone deadly ill, most of us try not to think about it; most of us try to ignore any possible signs. Though for us wives and husbands who live it, it is a never ending battle.  

We’re supposed to hide our tears, be strong so that the patient knows they can carry on, we’re supposed to smile and lie when asked how they are doing, we are supposed to seem like behind closed doors we don’t sob into our pillows, wondering why something so cruel would be so forcefully bestowed upon us. The truth is, we aren’t as strong as we appear. Just masks worn onstage so that everybody will believe that we are still living like we would, had everything be normal. Big happy masks with the wide grin that looks sort of creepy, but our real mask is the worrisome days and the sleepless nights that come.  Most nights we wait around by the phone, praying that nothing has happened, and in the morning we drink our coffee and go to work as if last night you weren’t up sobbing.  We stumble through it. 

I guess you could say that we are survivors too? I mean, more than half of the time we are sleep deprived and depressed; it amazes me how the spouses don’t end up dead first. We survive though. Despite all desperate attempts to make it all better. God, how we struggle. I often hear how hard the patient’s have it, always from somebody who’s never really dealt with it. A person who has never seen their loved one writhe in pain after a bone marrow test. One who has never really seen how broken hearted a woman is to have lost something so feminine to cancer.  You have to live it to see it. We may not have physical pain in the same amounts as patients but it’s there, and we aren’t nearly as emotionally stable! Yet, through everything we trudge on and hope to move forward with tomorrow having no bad news. 

We have our good days, days when we fall asleep waiting for the phone to ring, and get that extra hour we need to survive, days when even our patient is brighter and happier, when the feeling is lightened. Though they never last, and eventually you suffer from the same miserable state you were in the day before.  Nothing ever really changes, except the days. 

I could go on about how horrible life has been  so dark and dreary ever since my husband was diagnosed for the second time, but it wouldn’t make any difference. I could lecture and lecture about how we spouses never get any of the credit we deserve. It wouldn’t make any difference. Our days will still be long and bleak, with only a sliver of hope for the days when everything will be over.  We will still go to bed tonight and wait for the phone to ring, jumping at every small sound the house makes, we will still get up with our coffee, get dressed, and go to work wearing our masks. We will always be the Cancer Patient’s Wife, and no position could be more darkening. 

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

Cancer create so many sad stories. Being a family member or a good friend to watch someone slowly die. Ain't easy. The story gave a different view point. Poor victim of cancer must see and feel the pain of the sadness around them. Thank you for a powerful story. I sat and watched good friends and family fade away with the cancer. Hard spot to be in for all involved.
Coyote

[Mark]

I'd rather have cancer I'm sure.