What we need is life ENsurance
Last Wednesday, I had yet another follow-up ultrasound to check on the status of the ovarian cyst I’ve been monitoring since January. Despite dim hopes that perhaps it had miraculously disappeared in the intervening 6 weeks, as it turns out, it has worsened in several somewhat disturbing ways, and surgery is definitely in my future. The real fun of this is that until it’s out, there’s no way to know what we’re dealing with. So the surgery could be the end of my worries…or it could be just the beginning.
Of course, because I’m not having a baby right this minute, my gynecologist has not yet called, so I will have to call and rattle her cage tomorrow, because I want to get moving on this. These changes took place in just 6 weeks; that seems a short time to me. Perhaps it’s true of all gynecologists, but my impression of mine is that she’s not really all that interested in your case unless you’re pregnant or recently post-partum. I think these people went into OB/GYN because they really like the idea of delivering babies; cysts aren’t nearly as cute.
I am concerned, because this is the first time the word “malignancy” came up as a possibility. No one says “cancer.” They say “malignant,” shielding themselves behind vocabulary. The same doctor that assured me back in January, and again in March, that it was almost certainly nothing and would go away on its own, wasn’t quite so certain in August. And last week, there was no such certainty, and the appointment ended with an apology. Which is just grand, considering how quick they usually are to dismiss you with “it’s nothing.” I guess I appreciate his forthrightness, finally, anyway.
So I did what any death-obsessive, 2-years-out widow would do upon being told she was going to be having surgery for something that may or may not be the big C: I went home and decided to get my affairs in order.
Now, this is a process I started not long after A died, having seen the struggles his family went through regarding his disorganized estate, and having read the nightmare stories of other widows at the board. I didn’t ever want myself or E to have to go through the results of unpreparedness. I made good headway, having left myself only a few “final wishes” stuff to take care of, and wills to get done, but for the latter, I’d even gotten the software purchased. And then I stopped, and 2 years somehow passed without my ever finishing. Sure, I had some useful information there for E, but all the really official stuff I never quite got to.
E wanted nothing to do with it, and, it seemed, would’ve liked nothing more than for me to stop talking about it. Frankly, I wanted to stop talking about it, too, but I couldn’t until it was done. It seemed like something I needed to do, not only because it was a good idea for anyone, but because it was one more rite of passage in this thing called grieving. It was a project I started in the aftermath of A’s death, and until it was finished, I felt held back in a way—stuck on the point. It was a task I needed to accomplish if I was to move forward—old business that needed to be taken care of before I could start with new business.
The news of my ultrasound disturbed E as much as it had me. And we talked for the first time of our separate, private, fears that it could be worse than we know. What about the hip pain I’ve been having on that same side? E’s uncle went in to the doctor for terrible hip pain; he ended up dying a few months later of cancer. What about the horrendous pain in my tailbone when I sit, even on pillows, that cropped up in the last 10 months? What if they go in and find far more than they bargained for? We had both thought it; neither of us said anything about it, and both for the same reason: we didn’t want to scare the other one. But now we have to talk about it. E, like many men, is not one to express much emotion beyond the socially approved anger, so I don’t know minute to minute how he’s feeling and dealing with these ideas, but I know he’s worried. And because I know he worries, I am not one to express all my concerns at length. I am not panicking yet; no point in worrying until we know. But of course, I consider the possibilities. All of them. We talked about a lot of things, including my hopes for him if something happened. And we talked about them reasonably, logically; it really doesn’t have to be a morbid conversation, and it wasn’t. At least, not from my perspective.
Suddenly, E seems to have picked up his dragging feet on the whole “getting the affairs in order” business. Today we got life insurance on both of us and our wills signed, witnessed, and notarized. Other than prepaying our respective cremations, everything is done. As done as it can be, anyway. And I’m relieved to finally check off something that has been on my to-do list for two years now. And we both know that the other one will not be left homeless should we die young. Death insurance, as it should be called, is no bet anyone wants to make. But we look at it as an umbrella on a partly cloudy day. If you take the umbrella with you, you won’t need it. But if you don’t, you’ll get soaked.
I feel good that it’s done. I feel responsible and efficacious. I feel like I’ve done a loving thing, taking care of this stuff in advance. But I am 36 years old. And you know what? I’m still too young for this shit.