By Kelley Reynolds
The thing about resiliency is in order to attain it, life has to knock you on your ass first. Right? How can you get up if you aren’t on the ground in the dirt?
My story, by the numbers:
26 = Trips to UCLA
10 = “Extra” months
5 = Brain surgeries
Infinite = Tears cried
“Brain tumor” NO WAY! There can’t be anything wrong with my husband’s brain. He earned a Master’s degree from Berkeley.
“Dying” IMPOSSIBLE! Have you even seen my husband? He is the Fitness Instructor for the Las Vegas Office of the Secret Service.
Cancer did not care about the logic of my denial. It didn’t even slow down for me to catch my breath.
There were 26 trips made to UCLA for treatment. For hope.
Inside one of buildings we frequently visited on the UCLA campus was a lovely courtyard with a tree and couple of tables and chairs. While he was receiving care, I would walk to a local restaurant and order lunch to go. I returned as the nurses finished with him. He and I would sit outside in the courtyard and eat lunch, like any two people in the world. It was a break, a respite from our current lives. Back when life was normal, once a week or so, we would meet for lunch. For an hour, in a courtyard at the UCLA cancer clinic, we could be normal.
We fought bravely, fiercely, naively, through exhaustion, through tears.
And then one day, there were no more lunches.
Life did not care that this was not my plan. Life continued without my consent. The sun rose the next morning. And the next. And the next. And so did I.
For whatever inexplicable reason, I was drawn to return to UCLA. I felt the desire to return. I wanted to walk to get lunch and go eat in the courtyard. I had this image; a way to honor or to connect to him. But life was moving forward. Life was not going to wait. Work beckoned. Piles of mail beckoned. The children’s activities beckoned. And so I rose and moved.
Life continued and changed. Children grew. People entered. Others left. New job. Fresh diploma. And still I felt pulled to return to UCLA. To eat lunch in the courtyard.
Only a few years had passed since he and I were there together. Now the time was right. My life was at a point and I was ready to make the trip.
The drive was unremarkable. When I arrived, I parked and set off on foot to decide on a restaurant. The sidewalks were familiar. But the place at the end of the block, where hamburgers had previously been sold, now specialized in fried chicken. That new café used to be the ice cream shop where I purchased about ten gallons of strawberry ice cream with crushed Butterfinger pieces on top. I continued undaunted. Thankfully, the sandwich shop was still on the corner.
With the paper bag, filled my husband’s favorite lunch, in hand, I followed the path I had walked dozens of times. I arrived at the familiar crosswalk and pushed the button. As I made my way across the street, I looked around the neighborhood. There was a brand new big building sitting in front of my destination. Maybe I was at the wrong intersection? No. I was in the correct spot. I would just walk through the new building to get to my courtyard. When that didn’t work, I decided to walk around this beautiful new building that was filled with eager energetic dental students, to get to our courtyard.
It only took 20 minutes of walking in circles for my denial to dissipate. My building was gone. Our courtyard was gone. Not just metaphorically, but actually. The courtyard that I daydreamed about for three years, demolished to make way for new fresh life. Now what was I going to do with the French dip sandwich? How was I going to honor him? I couldn’t sit in the new place. There weren’t any trees or greenery. And, it wasn’t ours.
Still clutching the lunch bag in my hand, feeling confused and disappointed, I made my way back to the street. As I stood on the sidewalk, contemplating my next move, I noticed that right next door was a park. Big trees, greenery, bushes.
Although we never visited it, I knew, being an avid outdoorsman (he proposed to me at Zion National Park), he would have loved this place. There was a perfect spot, under a tree next to the pond. I sat on the ground and savored our lunch.
While on the ground, I thought about this situation. Sure, my life was moving, better than I imagined it would. Yet it never occurred to me that the lunch of my day dreams could have changed. What a silly expectation. That life would stand still.
Soon lunch was over. It was time for me to leave. So once again, I rose from the ground and continued to move.
