Mom always said I'm a freak of nature for my ability to compartmentalize like that—I can put my feelings aside and focus on something else entirely, pretending whatever bad thing I don’t want to feel doesn't exist. It's not healthy, I'm aware of that. But it's just what I do. I like to process my feelings in my own time, when I'm ready.
With this, I'll never be entirely ready. But I have to go back to Michigan soon, and I need to face the mess that is my life.
Dutchie.
His face fills my mind's eye—his sandy blond hair that was always messy and sticking up in every direction, no matter how much he tried to comb it. His puppy dog brown eyes. His lips.
I remember his kisses. The softness of them—sweet and tender, as if I was the most precious thing in the world, delicate and fragile and priceless. He'd frame my face in his hands and move in slowly, eyes open and searching me as if my face somehow held the answers to everything. His lips would touch mine and he'd breathe out as if in relief, as if he'd been longing to kiss me.
He was subtle about wanting sex. He'd kiss me like that and his hands would slowly wander to my waist, find the hem of my shirt and hesitantly wander to my chest. I thought his hesitancy was sweet, although it also frustrated me at times, especially later in our marriage. Even though I literally never turned him down unless I was on my period or legitimately sick, he was always a little shy about it. I didn't know how to talk to him about it, though, and never really did. I wanted him to initiate it more—I was almost always the one to start things. Which I didn't mind, most of the time.
There were just times when I wanted to be…taken. Dominated a little. Treated like I wasn't a delicate flower. I was hesitant to show him the true depths of my need—the real intensity of my desires. I tempered my responses to things because it seemed like it made him uncomfortable when I went too crazy.
I was holding back.
Fuck.
Our whole marriage, I was holding back. I never gave Dutchieallof me. I didn't think he could handle it. There were times when I wanted sex and he was…I don't know. Not indifferent, just…not as eager for it as I was. Not as excited. I learned to recognize when he wasn't in the mood and I'd keep it to myself. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and masturbate as silently as possible. And let me tell you, that's tough. You know how much it sucks having to tamp down your orgasm?
But how could I be mad at him about it? I couldn't. He was just so fucking loving. He lived to take care of me. He cooked for me all the time. Opened doors. Held my hand everywhere we went. Constantly asked me what he could do for me and never so much as blinked at my requests, even when they were odd or inconvenient for him.
Snuggling with Dutchie was the greatest. He loved to snuggle more than just about anything—I think that was his real love language. Laying in bed in Pumpkin, watching a show on our laptop, my head on his chest, his arm around my shoulders—that’s when Dutchie was the happiest.
He never raised his voice to me, even in our worst argument.
He had the most incredible sense of direction of anyone I've ever met, as if he had an internal compass as accurate as a Canadian goose's.
He could be uproariously funny, especially stoned. He would do these crazy impressions of famous actors—they weren't necessarilyaccurateimpressions, but they were funny as hell and you knew who it was.
My thoughts turn dark, then.
To that night.
He'd been feeling under the weather for a while. Weird back pain. Loss of appetite that meant he was dropping weight when he was already a pretty slender guy. He was tired all the time all of a sudden. Stomach issues.
And then, that day, I noticed a yellowish tinge to his skin, and thatreallyworried me. And then he started vomiting.
I drove us to the nearest ER. We waited. And waited. He got examined, got blood drawn, poked, prodded, x-rayed, MRI'd…the works.
Then came the results. A nurse guiding us to a different part of the hospital. A placard outside an office with the doctor's name and that awful word: oncologist. All I really remember is the scan results on a computer screen turned to face us. A mass over his pancreas. A big one. But not just the one—lots of them, as if the big mass had spawned a horde of little ones.
It was everywhere—stomach, lungs, bones, brain.
I remember the phrase “weeks at most" being uttered.
Palliative care. Make him comfortable. Get your affairs in order. Do you want to speak with a social worker? We have clergy available.
Dutchie fought it like a warrior—he was calm. Talked about what we'd do after he beat it…even though we both knew there was no fucking hope.
And then, at some point, there was no more fight. There was a skeleton in the hospital bed, wrapped in jaundiced skin, all sunken eyes and wheezy breath. There were the endless hours of silence broken only by the beep and hiss and whirr of the support machinery. His eyes cracking open to find mine. That small, cheerful, loving smile would light up his face, no matter how he felt.
I lost time in that hospital room. Hours, days, and weeks jumbled together. There was no sun, no clouds, no moon, no stars, no soil, no wind. Just that room with the generic wallpaper and the machines and the bed and man I loved wasting away to nothing before my eyes, in agony even the strongest of drugs couldn’t entirely mask.
Then there was the end.
His hand curling around mine with sudden strength. His last words that I've never been able to repeat, in my own head or out loud.
The monitorbeep-beep-beeping…thenbeep—beep—beeping, and thenbeep…beep…beeping…
