The Meltdown

It finally hit him. The Big C, cancer, and when I reached over to touch him the other night, he barked and growled at me like an animal who had been wounded and was in excruciating pain. As if I was the one who had inflicted the blow. What do you want? he said, what do you want. I just want to touch you. C’mon, he said, everyone knows what they want, as if he was prodding me to challenge him to have sex just one more time. It was not a good night. He had done, during the last few days since the test results were revealed, what men are acculturated to do, to suppress the anger, think lightly of it, be cavalier, pretend it isn’t serious, hold it in and be strong. I even began to think, aw, it’s nothing. We talked about who takes out the garbage or unloads the dishwasher, what’s for dinner, how the day went. Life as usual. Then, blam. Crisis. This is REAL. I confess, I was hurt by his outburst of anger, accused him of pulling away from me and disconnecting, and went to the couch to sleep … or at least make an attempt at it. It was a long, not good night.

He’d gotten a phone call from a nurse who delivered the news rather matter-of-factly as she asked to schedule the biopsy appointment for mid-June. Wait a minute, he said to me the next morning, after pouring out tears of fear and sincere apology, I had this test done in March. He sobbed. His body shook. I held him. I listened, stroked his back and kissed his neck. Why was it they were calling me at the end of May when the test was done in March, he said. What happened? What’s going on here? We both know. We work for major medical centers. Patients fall through the cracks. And he wasn’t paying attention. My husband is scared, anxious, wondering how long he will live, what his quality of life will be, whether surgery will be necessary and if it is, knowing that he will be incontinent and lose sexual function. I think this scares him more than it scares me because while sex has always been important to both of us, this diagnosis is more than that. It is about mortality and how much time is really left, how many days, months, years. Is this slow growing or virulent? The anxiety of waiting until July to hear the biopsy result (sorry, we have a practice of not giving that information out over the phone) after we return from vacation. I say, call the doctor and tell him about the time lapse, ask to be seen sooner, take a stand. He does. The doctors says, no worries, take your vacation, your PSA is low and the test is 75% accurate. There’s time to see what’s going on. One has to be a believer in something to live in this world.

So, for both of us, this is really taking a step back and asking, what are the priorities? reflecting on our lives, what we want, how we want to be together as we go through this. I want to say, this isn’t happening to us, it’s some kind of dream. I always was a conflict avoider. But, now I am conscious, more conscious of this relationship, and how much it means to me.

The Phone Call

I’ve been joking around, poking around the edges of waning sex, imagining the passion of my youth and the not so long ago time of yearning and desire, before vaginal fluids evaporated and the frustration of lost erections. This week, I wondered if I would need to start using the term “sex” with the same Bill Clinton definition. Oh, and by the way, I didn’t inhale, either. I was talking to myself, that inner dialog that goes on when the questions are too startling to ask aloud for fear of hearing the truth or expressing blame: Will he ever enter my body again? Was that time last month the last time in my life? Do we need to honor or mark the last time as a moment of profundity in our lives? I am mourning my aging and my self as a sexual being.

Every day husband and I have phone chat time, catch up time, how’s your day going time. It’s never predictable about when we’ll talk. Yesterday, he called just before noon and after the usual updates — me reporting how my phone interview went with the prospective job, he telling me about who said what at his office and the routine transactions of life, he announces rather quietly and nonchalantly that the doctor’s office just called with the elevated PSA test results. It’s showing cancer, he tells me, so I’m going to need to go in for a biopsy.

Since this news, the hours of the last day have been a blur. I am stunned. I have a physical explanation now for why we have had to work so hard to sustain an erection. I am feeling sad, disconnected, wanting to support him and feeling this sense of impending loss and fear. Not knowing for several more weeks whether this is an aggressive or slow growing version of prostate cancer, or maybe, it’s a misdiagnosis. Hah. And, I think, this is not about me. This is about supporting him and us, and being in life together living full out for whatever time we have here. Unpredictable as life is.

It is time for me to challenge the traditional definitions of sex, love, intimacy, and find new ways of expression through physical touch and tenderness that will keep us close. That’s all we have together — reinventing our future, mourning our past and letting go.

Today will be life as usual. We will meet at the end of the day for our usual Friday night date. It will be at the Art Museum, and we’ll see what happens next.

Elder Sex in a Heartbeat

These days we are in the rhythm of being separated during the week and reunited on Fridays after work. Husband leaves the cottage in the country on Tuesday morning for the 50 minute commute to his office. Why bother coming home he says, when I leave the office at 7 p.m., don’t get home til closer to 8, then we’re in bed by 9:30. Hardly seems worth it. I can’t disagree. So, now we have three nights of independence for both of us! Why? He says the obvious answer is the price of gas. He says he is saving about $250 month by sleeping on the sofa. I know for certain he’s not fooling around. I kinda like this arrangement though I miss him. It gives me a chance to live the single life once again. No worries about checking in. I can arrange an impromptu after work let’s get together for a glass of wine meeting with a girlfriend. Work late if I want to. Stay up all night or go to sleep early. No one to cook for or disagree with. A peaceful interlude.

One reason, I think, that he wanted to do this is that he anticipates that our sex life will improve in a heartbeat the moment he steps back across the threshold. So far, I am dubious. We’ve been running this experiment for the last two months, and instead of an up-tick in our sex life we’re on hold. It appears that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is not as compelling for us, the 60-somethings, as it might have been when our hormones were raging full strength. I’m not sure if I should be hopeful or discouraged. Right now, I’m feeling more discouraged. True, we have this great Friday night date reunion. We meet up for dinner, review the events of the week (even the ones we shared by telephone or email in the intervening days), hold hands across the table, smile lovingly, sip a glass of wine or two, and then make our way home, one following the other (usually him behind me), hug or touch each other tenderly and fall asleep.  I’ve discovered that sex with a 60-something husband is better in the morning.  But it usually takes a hit of Viagara to get us going, and that means planning, popping the pill an hour before the intended consequence, and spontaneous love goes out the window.  It’s a bummer.   So, lately I’m thinking that perhaps I’m complacently content to have my best friend next to me, we nestle like spoons, and it’s good enough.  I hate it that my body and brain are totally not connected on what I want to do and what I can’t do.  It takes too much lubricant and intention to make love making happen.