Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

Hollis, too, had been mindful of the patients which filled the suite with Debra — several he had grown fond of encountering, others he recognized but hardly acknowledged. More striking to him, however, was the diversity of the continually changing group. Aside from retired, middle-aged, or university material — male or female — there were white and black patients, mainland Chinese and Mexican locals, a Japanese housewife and a Saudi Arabian graduate student. A handful of different languages were spoken in that room, a cross section of the world had somehow found its way into the desert and past the sliding doors of the cancer center. But over time — as Debra's illness progressed, as the chemo only slowed its advance — new patients began appearing in the places where familiar bodies had previously sat; then it felt like a lethal game of musical chairs was being played out, one in which the names of the winners and losers weren't divulged. Yet few, if any, it seemed, would be spared the ravages of the disease; fewer and fewer were bound to circumvent its wrath, and so everyone, he now believes, will have their lives altered at some point by the infernal lottery of cancer.

Even so, there were no conversations of possible death at the Patient Treatment Suite, no end-of-life issues brought up during commercial breaks or between bites of food, as if an implicit vow to avoid the subject had been sworn by the patients, their families and friends, and the nurses. The treatment alone reinforced the idea that cancer wasn't an automatic death sentence, and as long as therapy continued, both the afflicted and their loved ones might survive with the disease for months, sometimes years (the end result — that final act where the chemo had either succeeded in eliminating the disease or failed altogether — was more akin to an abstract concept than a certainty). In this way, death refused an obvious personification; it wouldn't hang about in the form of an archaic, lingering, black-hooded specter, nor would its onset produce crucifix-like stigmata upon the flesh of the doomed. Instead, it was a kind of death which had an intangible presence, manifesting by degrees rather than all at once — covertly building upon itself like a creeping paralysis, spreading here and there — with the telltale signs becoming cumulative and, to those expecting its imminence, undeniable.

Now without the advantage of much hindsight, Debra's cancer months had already relegated a number of the recently deceased to memory, acquaintances met early on at Gilda's Club — five or six faceless women to Hollis — which his wife mentioned only after each had passed away. “We lost Dianne this week,” she'd tell him, saying so in a direct, unemotional tone — as effortless and nonchalant as if she had just uttered, “We're out of toilet paper again.” Since Debra began attending the meetings, the club had also lost a Rebecca, an Alice, a Martha, a Kelly, and — because Debra always referred to her by her full name — one Tina Archuleta. With the exception of Tina Archuleta, the women died from complications brought on by their advanced ovarian cancer (bowel obstructions, fluid collecting in the lungs, tumors pressing on key organs). Ms. Archuleta, on the other hand, was a stage-I survivor who had been free of the disease for six years; a seemingly healthy, muscular woman, an avid cyclist and jogger, she frequented the meetings whenever possible, encouraging newcomers to “thank Mother God and surrender yourself and the temple of clay you live in to Her care,” while giving everyone a good look at the overly enthusiastic, beatific face of remission.

But it was Tina Archuleta's unexpected demise which altered Debra's normally impassive response to such losses, dismaying Hollis with a sly grin even as she somberly explained that Tina had been killed in an off-road accident (thrown from an open Jeep when the vehicle lost control, her body sent tumbling down a prickly pear — covered hillside before coming to rest at the rocky edge of an arroyo). “It's pretty tragic,” Debra said, shaking her head. “I guess her temple of clay got busted to pieces.”

They were driving back to Nine Springs from Tucson, and Hollis — right hand on the steering wheel, left hand turning the radio dial to his favorite country station — glanced at her, discerning then from her expression that it was sarcasm he had heard and not simply a bad choice of words. “That's awful,” he said, returning his stare to the road. “Why'd you say that?”

She shook her head again, as if she wasn't so pleased with herself. “Who knows what's gotten into me,” she said, maintaining the same somber tone yet doing nothing to suppress her grin. “I think I'm in shock. It must be shock. At least she's with Mother God now.”

“Stop it. Why are you talking like that? Why are you smiling?”

She shrugged her eyebrows once, and with that the slight grin disappeared for a moment — only to reemerge seconds later as a full-blown smirk: “You know, we all die someday of something, dear. It's not like getting past cancer means you'll live forever. But promise me one thing, will you?”

Somewhat hesitantly, he answered, “What is it?”

“Considering everything I've gone through with this disease — it doesn't matter if I get flattened by a bus or crushed under a boulder — you better make sure my obituary says ovarian cancer is what did me in, okay?” She half chuckled at her own request, but her levity was unnerving to Hollis.

“Deb, don't talk like that,” he immediately responded. His forward gaze drifted across an abandoned strip mall and the parking lot of a Tony Roma's. “And please stop smiling. It isn't funny.”

This is how you're coping, he had thought afterward. This is how you're dealing with what's happening to you, and us. She would tell him again and again that Gilda's Club had been a blessing, that its support had lifted her from the melancholy and haze of her ordeal (even as her cancer remained, even as the treatments had failed to bring beneficial results). The other Gilda's Club members she joined every week — those who were sharing her fears and sickness — had instilled the importance of positioning one's self to be a survivor; they had, in fact, added color to her life under the bleakest of circumstances — not just with humor, or counseling, or reliable information, but also in a more literal fashion: she was advised to avoid muted shades, encouraged to wear clothing which was vibrant, warm, and positive.

Then gone were the gray sweatpants, the black sweaters; gone, too, were the black ceramic dinner plates, and the light-gray bedroom walls and ceiling (a color she had originally picked for their room, a color Hollis had blotted out over the course of a weekend by covering it beneath a thick, smooth veneer of pale yellow). Soon the bedside table was lined with a row of small, brown-tinted bottles, each containing a different oil and scent which — according to the aromatherapist who had visited Gilda's Club one week — were excellent for activating the olfactory nerve cells in the nasal cavity, sending impulses to the limbic system (the part of the brain commonly associated with emotions and memory), as well as relieving various physical maladies by stimulating the immune, circulatory, and nervous systems. At any given hour, the bedroom became fragrant with eucalyptus and wintergreen (aiding congestion relief), jasmine (calming depression), lavender (reducing anxiety and improving sleep), citrus (elevating mood and increasing mental sharpness), peppermint (helping with digestion while reducing nausea), rosemary (easing pain and providing muscle relaxation), or the single best oil for evoking a surge of happiness: cherry. At last, Debra would take it upon herself to symbolize happiness with her own hand, using Hollis's paints and brushes, climbing a stepladder in order to design a bluebird on the bedroom ceiling — its wings widened amid a flat yellow sky, its arrow-like beak aimed at the doorway. “It's our bluebird of happiness,” she had told him while lowering herself from the stepladder, blue paint spattered on her fingers. “Everyone should have one, don't you think?”