Cake

March 26, 2022

My parents came to town to visit yesterday. I asked them to come after my surgery/biopsy so that they could enjoy the beginning of Spring here, but also in case I was dealing with any bad news.

I was able to put on a pretty happy face when we went to eat dinner with them at the Airport Marriott they were staying at. I did my makeup for the first time since the surgery and wore my long hair down, styled in waves, covering the shaved spot and big scar on the back of my head. 

There was hardly any parking when we arrived, so we parked in the back of the hotel. I didn't have the energy to walk all the way to the front, so I called my dad and asked him to come find us and open the door. He wasn't finding us, but I finally saw the sign by the door that said "Push button for assistance"  and the door just opened.

The food took a while to come, so we talked and laughed quite a bit. Matt enjoyed hearing funny stories about me as a child. We never seem to run out of things to talk about. By the time the waitress finally dropped off our check, my body, mind, and head were extremely tired. My dad was buying, so Matt took me home.

The next morning, we picked up my parents and brought them to our house for lunch. They had taken a walk that morning and enjoyed the blossom show that the Seattle area offers this time of year. Matt made my dad a turkey sandwich, and I made my mom an egg salad with celery, avocado, and cheese. She said she loved it. Whenever we go to Utah, she makes yummy vegetarian food and makes sure I'm generously fed, so it was nice to finally return the favor.

There's a popular cake shop in Georgetown Matt loves called Deep Sea Sugar and Salt. It looks like an older house, green, with a bay window on the second floor. "Cake Shop" is written in plain letters underneath. There is usually a line out the door. 

This place is so popular that you can pre-order slices online to reserve the flavor you want. It was Matt's idea to do this so that my parents could try a fun place while they were here. Although I planned to go, I was really tired after lunch, so we decided Matt and my dad would pick it up while my mom and I stayed home.

I was thinking about taking a nap, but that wasn't how it went. Through tears, my mom told me my dad has had a really hard time. 

"He's always had a soft spot for you, because you remind him of me," she said in that sad, halting way that is so familiar. 

"I know," I said. 

"He was so sure you were going to be fine," she said.

Will I be fine? I'm trying to tell myself yes, which is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I am still trying to believe it because I don't see any other way to survive.

"Honestly, every morning morning feels like waking up to a nightmare," I said. 

When I'm dreaming, it's a different reality. The fact that I have a brain T-word and the C-word hasn't entered my dreams yet. I hope it never does.

When I was a toddler, I complained to my parents that my head was hurting when I watched TV. For some reason they were worried that I might have a brain t-word. My Mom says that was one of the only times she's seen my dad cry. 

I just needed glasses. 

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Matt and my dad came home with three slices of cake: lemon, nine-pound chocolate porter, and chocolate blackout. We put them on plates and passed them around in the living room, each of us trying the different flavors. 

The lemon had a tangy injection of lemon curd in the middle. I thought it was better than the lemon cake we had at our wedding, but it wasn't my favorite. The chocolate blackout was good, but the nine-pound chocolate porter was the best. It's Matt's favorite--dense, and impossibly moist. Chocolate at its finest.

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When crying kept me from sleeping early this morning, I looked online for the answer to a question that was weighing on my mind. If I die, what will it look like? According to my sources, I will just be tired a lot because of the pressure on my brain. It doesn't sound like I will lose my mind, thank God. Most likely, I will get tired more and more until one day, I will slip out of consciousness while I'm sleeping. 

I hope this is many years off, but it's something I wanted to know. It actually brought me a lot of peace, because I've always said that's how I'd prefer to go if I had a choice. I'm not as afraid of death as I used to be, but I don't want to suffer. Ideally, it will happen when I'm old, laying in bed next to Matt.

I should probably ask Dr. Graber if this is correct considering my type of t-word, but it's not something that is easy for me to talk about. I mean, we're talking about death here. And I'm only 37!

I know people get c-word much younger, or even die. Two friends from my high school had young children diagnosed with it. One of them is still alive. The other is not. 

Years ago, I heard that Alisa, a friend I had growing up, had been diagnosed with Leukemia. Although I was shocked and saddened when I heard, I think that part of me didn't believe it. I hadn't talked to her in who knows how long, and after moving to Spokane and then Seattle, it was something I knew, but didn't think about often.

A few months ago, I was going through an old box of notes that I had taken home from my parents' house. They were mostly the kind we passed to each other in class or in the halls as we laughed and socialized between middle school periods. Many of them were from Alisa, A.K.A. "Al" or "Slimey". Most of them addressed me as "Sexy". Several of them said nice things about me, like that she thought I was pretty, and that all the boys liked me. 

When I visited Salt Lake not long after, I asked my mom if she could text Alisa's mom so that I could get Alisa's number. A couple of days later, as I was about to leave for the airport, I found out that she had passed away. She was a year or so younger than me.

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Part of what is hard is that I feel like life just got started for me. After many years of fairly short relationships, I moved to Spokane for a fresh start, and then to Seattle. Matt and I met a few years ago, but we just got married last Spring. We bought a house in the suburbs at the end of August. We wanted to start a family. 

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