The last normal time

Everyone’s lives are full of before and after moments.

There are the ones that apply to everyone, like assassinations or natural disasters. Then there are the milestones that are specific to each of us. No matter what they are, they divide our lives into before and after. The time that life went from normal to not. At least not until we can figure out what the new normal is.

The last normal time, for me, started in late July, when our air conditioning broke during a heat wave. Because everyone’s air conditioning malfunctions when the temperature reaches triple-digits, it would be a day or so before a repair crew could reach us. At night, deep in a pool of my own sweat, I turned to Jim in bed.  I summoned whatever energy I could to issue a siren song across our mattress: “Tomorrow. Hotel.”

The next day, I lucked out finding a last-minute deal at the swanky, beautiful, art deco place in town. It was just my daughter and I, as Jim felt the need to stay home for some reason. She was thrilled with her first (to her memory) visit to a hotel, and we recovered from the heat by swimming in the pool and buying ice cream sandwiches from the gift shop. That night, nestled in the luxury of cool, white sheets, I got the text message that would come to define my last normal time. I don’t recall the precise words, but it contained the following information:

Keith. Pancreatic cancer. Stage IV.

We hadn’t seen Keith for many years, but I had assumed that some occasion or another would bring us together again. I was never in Keith’s inner sanctum, but he was a masterful combination of dry wit and warmth. Whatever wry quip he slayed you with would be followed with a toothy grin and shrug of the shoulders. “Sorry! Had to!” I replied with something stupid like “That’s really, really bad. Like, really bad. This is a bad diagnosis that will be followed by bad things.”

“We all know what this means,” Jim replied.

Over the next few weeks, Keith would discuss how much time he expected to have left (not much), the options he had for treatment (few) and how loved he felt by those around him (infinitely). Keith’s friends would learn that he didn’t just have the bad cancer. He had the bad version of the bad cancer. I had lunch with a friend who was flying to attend Keith’s birthday party, which was just a few days away. She fretted that he wouldn’t be alive by the following Saturday.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be alive next week,” I said. Despite his diagnosis, he seemed optimistic that he had a few months left, at least online. I pondered what it would be like to get a cancer diagnosis at a young age. I had no idea, because I didn’t have cancer. I was a youngish person living a normal life.

A few mornings later,  Keith was in the hospital and not expected to live out the week. He was gone by the end of the work day. Jim and I hugged as soon as we got home. This was the first time we’d lost a friend who was our age. Jim and Keith were born a day apart. Same hospital. A peer. A young person. Going from a friend’s diagnosis to death in just three weeks was emotional whiplash.

“I feel like I was kicked in the head by a horse, stood up, and then was kicked in the head by another horse,” I said. But we had an important realization. The kind of things that are plastered on motivational posters, but feel completely new when faced with a tragedy.

There are no guarantees in life, we told ourselves.We could all be gone tomorrow.

We’re going to be better adults, we told ourselves. We’re going to make sure we have all the right paperwork and lots of savings and all that, we told ourselves. I would start flossing, like I always promised my dentist, because responsible adults do that. Keith is gone, but our lives are still normal and we can use this as a reminder to do better.

That night, I went out in a driving rain storm to pick up carry out. I wrestled my enormous, botanical garden golf umbrella back in the car, becoming soaked in the process. I could swear I heard laughing from the passenger seat.

“Good thing you have that giant umbrella to keep you dry.”

“Oh you shut your mouth,” I said to the empty air. Giant grin. Shrug.

I knew Keith would never make a smart ass remark to me again. I would never see that smile again. Because Keith was gone, but I was a normal person, getting a carry out order on a normal week night. My normal person problem was that my umbrella wouldn’t function properly and I got soaked.

Less than a week later, a nurse would tell me that I probably had cancer. The difference is that my cancer had treatment. I was facing hair loss, nausea, pain, vomiting, the amputation of body parts, chemo brain, finger-nail loss, and many, many more things.  And my road has been comparably easy. Keith faced death.

At first, I thought Keith’s death would serve as one of my milestones of loss. The First Loss of a Friend Who Was Reasonably Close to My Age and Died Before Their Time. I thought for sure that I would go on with my own existence with Keith’s death as a reminder that there are no guarantees in life. Keith’s diagnosis and swift death will always be linked to my own diagnosis in my mind.

The final time I looked at the divide between those who’ve had cancer and those who have not from the Not side of the fence. I didn’t know it, but I had multiple cancerous tumors in my body. I was about to have an after that was irretrievably changed.

It was my last normal time.