keys on the table

Today I took Tad's car down to Santa Cruz. I wasn't comfortable having to change two cars around every time the crazy city of San Francisco comes through to sweep the streets, a policy I can only imagine as a cash cow for the deficit-laden burg.
I also took his car down because I could no longer stand the pain of seeing his keys on the table in my living room even though he wasn't in my house.
When Tad is in my house, those three and a half days every two weeks that we call "shared custody of our couple" I see them looking up at me.
When he's there the fridge is full of good stuff I've gone out to buy at Trader Joe's with this incredibly maternal delight: I walk through the store literally asking myself over and over again, "what would he really like this time"?
When he's there I have a bouquet of cut flowers on the table in the living room right next to where he puts his laptop.
When he's there I am less of a busy-body, feel less the need to go out and be with people, to chat on the phone, to run around.
When he's there I read more. I breathe more slowly. I smile more.

I guess it's no surprise that I usually stop crying when I'm in that hospital room next to him. The fear that he might be dead in a few weeks dissipates. The tugging anxious feeling I get when I am out in the world goes away.

I spend entire days (and some nights) here not just because it takes a lot of work to put your life on hold for 5 weeks. Though I am here for that: for helping him with the paper work, the phone calls, the contacting family and friends, the finding someone to look after the cat. But I'm mostly here because I'm afraid that once they've blasted the hell out of his immune system with these chemicals that he just might not survive. Being in the same room with him - as much as possible - is my way of overcoming that fear.

Of course it makes no sense. I'm not going to get into a wrestling match with the grim reaper should he (or she) come by. If I give it more than a moment of thought I see that my being there doesn't keep death away even if I like to imagine that having a loved one close by somehow prolongs life through some kind of love-based immune stimulation.

No. My thinking is purely mathematical. If he is going to die I want to be with him as much as I can before he croaks. So if he is going to die soon a possibility our oncologist puts at 50% then I want to get as many minutes in now as possible. I am happy to spend more time away from him to balance this out in, say, ten years.

This is not a new feeling for me. Ever since the AIDS epidemic tore through my circle of friends like a weed whacker taking out the tall plants I have been far less patient. When I get stuck in traffic I sputter and spout because I feel like somehow someone is wasting MY time. The notion that hundreds of people are stuck in the same traffic jam and all just as unhappy means little to this part of my brain.

Life is short. I'm stuck. And I don't want to spend my precious hours this way. It is seriously near the top of my list of reasons why I don't do nine to fives.

We are getting ready for bed. Tad has just had his first shower in hospital since arriving here quite unexpectedly four days ago. (For the background info: he woke me up with pains that I figured were due to his strained work out the day before. He insisted the pain was more intense than work-out pains. I took him to ER where they said he had a mild version of pneumonia. I left for the day and said I'd meet him at my house that evening, only to find him still hospitalized and receiving a fresh batch of platelets - for some reason he had next to none. A whirlwind later - we landed in oncology with a leukemia diagnosis).

His feet and ankles are swollen from all the water they have to pump into him to keep the chemo flowing through his body. He is still in fine form, full of smiles and sassy comments. We are avoiding any talk of what life without an immune system might look like in a few days. And we're ready to sit down and watch a silly Italian movie that will transport us to Venice - a city he discovered this summer.