I can’t count how many times I have used the expression ‘it is what it is’.
It is my get out of explaining myself to others; my ‘I don’t want to talk’ expression. I used it when my eldest son had a serious operation after he was born, I used it again when my husband had cancer seven years ago, and I used it time and time again when Oscar got diagnosed, went through treatment, relapsed and died. And now I have to say it again; it is what it is.
My family’s world has been rocked again, and over the next months or year we will close in on ourselves and once more submerge into the land of hospital visits, cancer treatment, insecurity, fear, pain, strength, courage and survival.
You’d think we’ve had enough, but life doesn’t work like that; we see that all over the world when we look at child poverty, famine, war-torn countries with innocent people having their lives destroyed, families suffering through no fault of their own. So we have to have perspective – again – and at least we can look to the medical profession and trust what they can do.
We have to explain to our children that although Oscar died, it doesn’t mean everyone dies of cancer. The difficult part of course for me is that all my silent prayers and all the research and knocking on doctors doors didn’t save Oscar because he had a brain tumour a little too early for paediatric brain tumour research to have caught up with other cancer research.
I have to find some superhuman strength that right now I am not sure exists. But of course it has to exist, because no one else is going to do this for me. And really, I have the easier of the jobs: I have to look after our family whilst my husband battles an invisible enemy he has not asked to fight but which has decided to fight him and he has to survive so he can stay with us.
I have of course told him that there is no way he is leaving, not now. And he should know better than to go against my wishes. As tempting as it is to join Oscar, no-one in this family will willingly do so without a fight. Oscar is already in our hearts, our minds and our souls every day and we plan to stay put together as a family.
So back to the juicing, the googling of all things alternative that won’t interfere with the treatment, the shopping for items that are going to make that one little bit of difference in recovery, the meals on wheels from family and friends, the countless phone-calls to the doctors with my latest discovery, the all night messaging with friends to run passed my latest ideas, the smiling to everyone in the playground telling them all: it is what it is.
Marie