chapter 7: part 1 Who do You Tell?

continued from chapter 6 part 8

Remember those movies when the spunky heroine kept her terminal illness to herself and tidily set about winding down her life without inconveniencing anyone? Real life is much messier. Did our heroine ever scream about the injustice of it all? Did she ever confide in anyone? Apparently a gentle cough was okay but an anorexic appearance would have been definitely uncool.

How do you feel about telling people you have cancer? What do you think they'll do? Shun you like lepers in the old days? Avoid you because they don't know what to say? Afraid you'll read pity in their eyes?

After Hal's operation, I was certain in my mind that we had to keep the news strictly within the family. There were a lot of what-if's buzzing inside my head and this seemed such a clear decision, so much so that I didn't even consider discussing it with anyone, including Hal. I simply asked the children to keep silent.

We told people his surgery was to correct a bowel obstruction.

I believed this was what Hal wanted and I made the decision while he was still groggy from the anaesthetic.

The big question was how would his clients react to the news. He loved his work and had said many times over the years that he couldn't imagine life without it. If that was the way he felt then I'd lie for him forever so that he could keep working, if he felt well enough to work. There was a time I talked idly of us settling in a retirement cottage somewhere warm and he'd emphatically snort that he had no interest in rusting out; he would continue writing as long as he could fasten his fingers to the computer keys. No retirement in Florida for this man.

I never thought of us as private people and there was little that we considered out of bounds but in this case I had to find a way to lie convincingly. Friends who knew he was in hospital believed, as we had, that he probably had Crohn's disease. After the surgery, when they called to ask how it went, the children and I answered vaguely that the blockage was removed and Hal would be out of hospital in a week or so.
It was perfectly clear in my mind that this was the correct way to handle the situation, so much so that it never occurred to me to ask for an update from the subject of all this attention, Hal.

continued in chapter 7: part 2