Listening

In February or so last year, temporarily in France - having just finished 3 years working with the Red Cross in Uganda, and supposed to head immediately off 2 years in Sri Lanka - and about 4 months pregnant, I learned that Mike's brain tumour was 'growing', and that things were 'not looking too good.'

I talked to our close friends Jen, Dave and Brad, and I talked to Sarah, all of whom gently suggested that it might be a good idea to come home for a visit. I looked into flights. I sorted out grandmothers and uncles (and Papa) to look after our 2 year-old son in Paris, while I flew to Toronto. I found a place to stay for a week. I bought a dinosaur for Lucas, a toy for Emily. I consulted everyone. Except Mike. For some reason, I couldn't talk to Mike, was afraid to.

Strange as it sounds, I flew halfway across the world, into icy Toronto, without having asked Mike if he wanted me to come. I landed, and then a good 48 hours passed before I could manage to call the Nault's place. I'm not sure if I talked to Dennis or Joan, or to Sarah, but it wasn't - still - to Mike.

I was invited over to the Nault's for dinner, and to stay over for a few nights. It was all instantly reassuring: come on over for flank steak, Caesar salad (The Dinner You Always Have at the Naults'). Al & Math will also be there. You can see the kids. Mike will be so glad to see you.

I don't remember first seeing Mike that evening, but I do remember the bear hug, the one we always gave each other (or should I say that he gave, he was the master of hugs like that, that everyone else would sort of fall into, totally relaxed and enveloping). It was a hug with a long, and somehow sounding just like always (reflective, appreciative, remembering) big Mike P. sigh. You just stayed in that hug until the sigh finished (that could take 30 seconds) and loved every second of it. That hug felt like friendship. Really, the meaning of the word was what that hug felt like.

We had a good dinner that night. Everyone was around the table. But it was hard, too. Mike had, to a degree, changed physically. There were things spoken but also unspoken, and deeply felt, feared and silently raged against. It's the last part that caught me by surprise. I had never seen Mike angry before, even if it was subtle, and beneath the surface. He was angry at what was happening to him, to his family, to his body, to his life.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I remember that night: after dinner, after the dishes were all washed, the kids had gone to bed, everyone said their goodnights, Mike & I stayed up (in the kitchen of course, the good ol' swivel armchairs) talking, and talking. There was a possibility of a (new, unexpected) surgery. We talked about that. I thought it was great, and said something to that effect, about how 'they' might be able to 'get it' or at least stop it from growing, or slow it down....Mike swiveled in the chair, looked me straight in the eye and said 'That's a pretty naive way to look at it, Megan'.

I was, to be honest, stunned. That I'd never heard Mike speak like that (calm, but direct and with some anger), or speak like that to me, was one, minor, detail. It threw me, that's for sure. But it was the ton of bricks that fell along with it: what (the alternative to my naivete, my wishful way of thinking, my refusal to acknowledge the elephant on the table) it meant. I don't think I accepted - and I won't say until that moment, because I still wouldn't accept it at that moment - was that - and it is still so painful to think, to write, to believe, to understand - that Mike was, in all probability, dying.

There is a lot more I want to write about what he said to me that night, about his thoughts and fears and firm, determined and protective intentions and plans for the future of his young family. But I think I am still too shocked by the fact that that was, though I refused to accept as such the possibility at the time, our last big, heart-to-heart conversation. We spent some of the next day together, and we talked a few more times on the phone, once I was in Sri Lanka. But that was the last time - and I know we all have our times - that I had time, one on one, with Mike.

And I regret, deeply and profoundly, that I couldn't grasp, or wouldn't accept - what was happening, and maybe, therefore, didn't just listen to him enough that night. Like maybe so many of us, instead of listening, accepting, I wanted to talk about solutions, I wanted to fix it, I wanted to find a loophole, I wanted everything to be okay....I wish I had just listened more.

Somehow I feel like I am missing Mike more, not less, with each passing day. I think about him many times a day. I loved the picture of him, head back full-out laughing that Tom posted the other day. I think I'll stop writing now, the tears are just flowing down my face. Instead I want to think about that image of Mike, laughing, full-on. I miss you, P.