At least it’s me.
When, over the last half a year, the words, I am going to die soon have entered my thoughts, I have sometimes found myself following it up with: at least it’s me.
Because my boys, without their dad…
I just. Can’t.
I can’t think of it. I can’t feel it. Even writing the sentence felt painful. Because ohhhhh. How they love their daddy.
Until I was made aware of the fact that my body was hosting cancer, I struggled a bit with the fact that my husband was the fun one. The one who would push me out the door for girls’ nights while, on the other hand, I would bemoan every minute of the 4.5 hours he would take to hit the links once in a blue moon. He would wrestle and play ninjas and throw them up in the air as I would look on, trying to keep my eyes open and my head on straight after a day filled with tantrums and bargaining. He would load them all up in the car for a day at the museum while I would cling to the four minutes I got alone in a bathroom stall while out to dinner as a family. I always felt like while I wanted to enjoy every moment, I couldn’t enjoy them like he could. I was stressed about logistics. And details. And what the process would look like to clean up the mess following the fun. Not every day. But I think, as we went from one to two to three in under 5 years, I just. Felt. Stretched. And I felt allll the mom guilt that I wasn’t doing enough. Teaching enough. Funning enough. That, plainly put, for them, I would never be enough.
And he. He was the glue that held me together. That held them together. That made us all stick.
And then. I watched him in the yard with them tonight. And I thought again, how thankful I was that it wasn’t him. But also, that it wasn’t me. And as of now, there’s little real reason, at least the kind that starts with C, to think I won’t be here for them. And I’m happy for that. Because of all the other lessons cancer taught me, I figured out that I am a good mom. That I am totally enough of the mom that I am meant to be.
And at dinner, in our thankfuls, he was thankful for me. Being the glue. That holds us all together. And I realized we have been living in a mutual admiration club. Where I believe he is the one they can’t live without. And he, I.
And I realized they are lucky to have us both. And we are both so lucky to have the other.
And to be stuck, like glue, to this life. The life that can sometimes become sticky itself. And can sometimes feel hard to trudge through.
But at the end of the day… We are both the fun ones. We are both necessary. We are both in love with one another. And just happy to have gotten stuck like glue.
