SPREADING THE NEWS

It’s finally dawned on me that this is something I’m going to have to tell people about. Especially jim’s family. I hadn’t told them anything so far because I didn’t want them to worry unnecessarily. I still didn’t want them to worry, but I couldn’t justify not telling them. Carol and Larry came over Monday night after Carol returned from an out of state trip. We worried about telling Carol (jim’s mom)—this is a woman who cried for 2 days when there was a extremely small likelihood that Liam had cystic fibrosis… As has been our growing tradition, we were, well, if not chipper, then non-emotional and optimistic. “It will be fine.” I told her as she started to cry “Don’t worry.” I assured her. (I don’t want to feel responsible for making people sad, and I really don’t want people to feel sorry for me.) I heard her though, when she told me (kindly) that I need to allow her her emotions. I guess I thought that if I am upbeat, strong, brave and optimistic in front of everyone, that I could spare them some sadness and worry. I truly think it helps, but I guess I just need to admit that this, well, just sucks. People (especially those who love me) have different ways of coping, and grief has a role in that.

We made a lot of phone calls the next night to spread the news. It’s just so odd, “I’ve got some crazy news to tell you…”, to which the response is invariably “you’re pregnant?”, “Ummm… not exactly.” I’m getting to the point of forgetting who I tell what, and honestly kind of sick of talking about it. All of these people are hugely important to us and deserve to know and to have their questions answered (this is all a shocking and new to them, as it was to us) but after awhile it just seems, well, rote, as jim aptly put it. How can cancer be rote? We need to get up the web page as soon as possible. Then people can get as much (or as little) information as they want without feeling like they’re imposing.