Agency

In Which Jim Had a Bad Night

Monday lunchtime, in yet another part of town

It had been a difficult night. Unsettled by his son's near admission of what Jim already suspected -- that Berry had stumbled off the path in terms of his marriage vows -- he'd had difficulty sleeping. By sharing his own slip, he'd hoped to help his son see it was possible to regain one's footing and leave mistakes in the past. But talking about it openly had unbottled the fizzy cocktail of regret Jim had been carrying for decades.

While there was no-one to apologize to now, his wife being long gone, he felt an urge for absolution. His guts, which were never quiet these days, churned harder than usual. With regret. With worry. With the monster that had already spread its tentacles through his colon, into his bowel and was now getting a start on his pancreas.

Having cancer had a way of putting things into perspective.

Reactions were rarely predictable. Cases in point:

When he'd fallen into an affair, rather than excited, he'd felt humiliated by his own animal nature.

When his wife had died, rather than sad, he'd felt victimized by the cruelty of fate.

Decades later, when he'd been forced to retire, rather than free, he felt a weight of loneliness, isolation and purposelessness that they didn't advertise in those retirement planning commercials.

And the day he finally visited the doctor's office about the discomfort, nausea and bloody stools he'd been having for years and the doctor looked at him and said I'll need to refer you, but I'm very concerned it could be cancer -- rather than scared, Jim felt, on the whole, settled.

He wasn't sure if that was a normal reaction. He wasn't the type to hang out in online medical forums or use google to seek out all the harrowing details of what he could expect from the remainder of his time.

The referral appointment came through pretty quickly -- an aberration in the space-time continuum of public health care -- ultrasounds and a humiliating biopsy were done. Within just two weeks, Jim was back in his doctor's office, holding a copy of his results, a prescription for codeine (like he'd just had his wisdom teeth removed) and a pamphlet short-sightedly entitled "Living with Cancer."

Based on the doctor's kind face and dismal prognosis, Jim had made the rather weighty decision not to have treatment. After all, he reasoned, the chance of it curing him at this stage was infinitesimal, whereas the chance that it would sap him of his strength and make him feel vastly sicker than he already did was a certainty. And he felt, suddenly, as though he had quite a lot to get done before he died.

He'd gone straight home from that appointment and begun the process of wrapping things up.

Without informing anyone, he spent weeks decluttering and organizing until every shelf, drawer and closet of the old family home held only the bare minimum of things. He did this thinking of Berenice, who would almost certainly be the one who would come and handle his affairs when he'd gone. That was one last little gift he could leave his daughter-in-law -- a simple, tidy estate.

He carefully went through old family photo albums, making sure each photo was annotated as best he could remember (Bertrand & Mum, summer 1979, Wasaga Beach) so that his son would have a record of his childhood when and if he reached the age that he wanted to look back on it.

He wanted to do something more for Berry. Something that would act like a father's hand reaching down from heaven whenever his son needed it.

That's when he's decided on his "project." All in all, the project itself has been a great motivator for keeping going. Not that he'd been feeling too terribly awful, really. In fact, most days, he still found his prognosis surprising and unrealistic. Surely with only months to go, he should be feeling much, much worse? Then again, he supposed, that's the way with life. There are ups and downs, but in the end, we're ultimately grading downward, bit by bit, slipping toward the inevitable.