Cruel Summer

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” -John Lennon

* * *

“This is going to be the best year EVER,” Olivier said, holding up his pinky finger.

“Hell yes,” I said. “This is going to be OUR year.” I wrapped my little finger around his and we sealed our pact. We had just returned from our turbulent holiday adventure in the U.S. and were only a couple of weeks into the new year.

He patted me on the leg. “2010 is going to be awesome.”

“Fuckin’ A right,” I said.

So it was decided, then. We had endured some stress last year. Nothing that we couldn’t handle. Most of it was the usual shit that everyone else gets stressed about. Sure, at the end of the year, there was travel & holiday stress coupled with some family drama, but… no biggie. Next year would be better. It would be OUR year.

Much like George Costanza, when he triumphantly declared, “This will be the Summer of George!”, after we made our pinky swear in our living room, we got ourselves all fired up, announcing how mind-blowingly radtastic 2010 would be.

We decided early on that we would do no big vacations, no major traveling. We would store our nuts away, lying low, being good to ourselves and putting more focus on things at home. Olivier wanted to get a new job and work on advancing his career. I wanted to put more time and energy into writing, start getting a few stories published and push my book nearer to its completion.

Check. Check. Check.

We did all of those things. In the Spring, Olivier found his new job. A short time later, I began to receive more acceptance letters and fewer rejections. Why? Because this was OUR year, goddamnit!

That’s what we thought, anyway. It seemed like we were right, too… until May rolled around. That’s when the first hit came.

I was sitting here, in this chair, at this desk, when Oliver called me to tell me that his aunt Dominique had been diagnosed with cancer. Inoperable. It was a big blow, but she wasn’t getting down about it, so we felt that we should follow her example.

There were frequent trips to Montmartre to visit, to help her do things that she was losing the ability to do herself. As we watched her grow thinner and weaker, my thoughts repeatedly turned to my maternal grandparents, who had both died from cancer. My grandmother lost a lengthy battle with skin cancer. (Her life and her final days have been wonderfully documented by my aunt on a blog dedicated solely to the story.)

I was also thinking more and more of my close friend Abbey back in Colorado, who had been diagnosed with cancer in 2007 and was still fighting.

With each visit to Montmartre, I began feeling more and more tired… and more pissed off.

At the end of May, the next hit came when Olivier and I learned that a family member back in the U.S. had passed away. We learned about this from a status update on Facebook and still do not know how or why he died, as no one bothered to tell us, stating that they “didn’t see the point.”

Of course… this set into motion some extreme family drama that I won’t get into here, as it’s just plain boring, none of your business and doesn’t really have much to do with the overall point of this post. Suffice it to say that someone we cared about and really liked died suddenly at the young age of 46, no one bothered to tell us, and it was upsetting.

So, we went on. We went about our day-to-day and we continued making trips to Paris to see Dominique. We sat on the couch, holding hands and shaking our heads, wondering what happened… we were so certain that this year was going to be fucking awesome. It just goes to show you that certainty and a positive outlook doesn’t mean jack shit when real life happens and gets in the way.

But, we went on… waiting. Waiting for the inevitable. There was speculation from various people. “She won’t last through the summer,” someone said. “This’ll all be over by the end of June,” someone else said.

Well, they were wrong, but not by much. It was July 20th when Olivier called me from work to tell me that this was the end. She wouldn’t last through the day.

She didn’t.

You know what happened next. Making arrangements. Dark clothes and lots of tissues. Standing around the Pére Lachaise crematorium. Scattering ashes on the grass.

This is where the sense of relief would have come in — that sense of relief that someone’s suffering is over and that you no longer have to witness it, regardless of how selfish that may be. The sense of relief that comes with knowing that the painful ritual of dark clothes and tissues is over once more.

This is exactly where that should have happened, but instead, it was the time when my dear friend Abbey back in Colorado took a sudden turn for the worst. After nearly 3 years of punching cancer in right in its evil rotting face, she was losing.

By the 8th day of August, it was over.

At the beginning of May, everyone close to me was fine. 3 months later, 3 of them were gone.

We hit our limit, then. Constantly on the verge of tears, I would break down while folding socks, or washing a dish. I gained several pounds in a short time because stress snacking is so fun and effective. The phrase, “fuck you, fucking cancer” was spoken many, many times.

I remembered how the “Summer of George” ended badly for him and I had to laugh a little.

Luckily, Olivier and I were able to take off for a week, so we headed south, to the coast. We needed to hide away from the world for a few days to recharge and lick our wounds.  We spent a week in La Grande Motte, avoiding the Internet, reading books, sipping wine, eating Mediterranean food and sitting on the beach.

“Next year,” I said, as we sat in the sand, watching the waves. “Next year will be better.”

“It can’t be any worse than this year,” Olivier said.

“Sure it can.”

“Yeah. I know,” he said.

“But, now… right now is good.” I held up my pinky finger. He wrapped his around it and we made a pact.

Sometimes, your plans don’t work out, but if you can collect a lot of really good right nows, that’s good enough.

* * *

“I’m glad we had the times together just to laugh and sing a song, seems like we just got started and then before you know it, the times we had together were gone.” -Dr. Seuss