A Victory Garden for Trying Times

by Debi Goodwin

  LABOUR DAY WEEKEND OFFERED US a gift that year: breathing space of golden days and warm evenings. In the garden, the flower beds were still vibrantly coloured by coneflowers, roses, and coreopsis, and the vegetable patch was showing off with produce ready for the plucking. Tomatoes still ripened; bean flowers still blossomed; the chard and the kale showed no signs of giving up. Jane had come home and was willing to help in the garden. Peter sat on the deck, on the orange cushions of his wicker chair.

  It would have been enough, under normal circumstances, to have me humming Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Our House,” but while the picture of the three of us in our yard looked peaceful enough, unseen shadows, like tumours on a CT scan, clouded our thoughts, weighed down our hearts. On Friday, Peter received news of an appointment to install a feeding tube on September nineteenth, three long weeks away. His tumour had grown from a spot to eight centimetres between May and the middle of August. It was hard not to imagine it was still growing like an overripe zucchini forgotten in the garden. We had hoped treatments that would shrink the tumour, if not get rid of it, would begin within a week or two. But Dr. D insisted she couldn’t begin chemotherapy until the feeding tube was in place. She was also waiting on the results of the echocardiogram. It all made sense — there was no use starting chemotherapy if Peter’s body couldn’t withstand the treatment — but the wait was tortuous nonetheless.

  The wicker chair had become Peter’s default location in the late summer as his energy waned with the summer light. From the chair, he stared out at the canopy of trees at the back of the yard. He could, he often said, stare at trees for hours and zone out, just as he had done in what he called “the loneliest year of my life,” that year in a bed at the back of a suburban house. That Labour Day weekend, he zoned out for hours.

  My memories of the Peter of the past, sitting in chairs on decks, are of a robust man sipping coffee and deep into a thick book, chuckling at one line, nodding his head at the insight of another. He was the man, after all, who on our first family vacation together brought a thick hardcover biography of Dickens as his light cottage reading. But this Peter had lost his appetite for coffee and food, as well as his concentration for burrowing into the weighty tomes he favoured. The hydromorphone, prescribed by Dr. F for Peter’s back pain, fogged his brain as it continued to worsen his digestive system.

  After his surgery in February, Peter couldn’t wait to get rid of his feeding tube. In his typical stubborn fashion, he ate his small meals religiously until the dietitian decided the tube — never used outside of the hospital — could be removed. Now, we were both desperate for him to have another one.

  On that heart-stopping visit when we’d learned the cancer had returned, Dr. F had said that if there was ever anything he could do, Peter should not hesitate to call him. Dr. F was a surgeon. A surgeon should be able to pull some strings to get a surgical bed earlier than the nineteenth, we reasoned. Peter drafted an email requesting Dr. F’s help. The Peter I knew would have written such an email in minutes and maybe run it by me to make sure the tone was all right, but this Peter relied on Jane and me to help him compose paragraphs that were merely cogent.

  With the email sent, we tried to make the most of our weekend together.

  On Sunday, we had a near-average day. I made a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and garden tomatoes. Peter ate one poached egg on a piece of toast with half a piece of bacon crumbled on top and he seemed to enjoy it. He and Jane sat reading while I planted another evergreen near the chain-link fence at the side of our property closest to the deck. Slowly, I’d been creating a living wall with the existing ivy that clung to the fence by adding more and more evergreens and euonymus to hide a swimming pool on the other side. Our neighbours of two years, quiet, kind people, were moving to another town, and we weren’t sure who would be moving in or whether they’d use the house themselves or rent it out as so many in our town did. I was afraid we’d lose our privacy and the silence of our yard. Peter warned me, once again, not to get ahead of the story. But he was always happy to see another tree and smiled in approval when I’d finished the job.

  We saw little reason to leave our home that weekend. We were outside most of the day. Inside, I wrote emails to people who didn’t know yet that Peter’s cancer had returned and made another batch of tomato sauce for winter. Suppers were easy. I cooked whatever Peter wanted and made Jane and me stir-fried vegetables with brown rice, and grilled chicken with more vegetables. Once darkness came, Jane and I walked through the streets of the town with only the sound of crickets around us.

  “Mom,” she said one evening, “you know you can call me whenever you want. I’m tougher than you think.”

  Labour Day Monday was Jane’s last day with us. She and I got up early and drove to the Niagara River gorge, where, in the spring, we had climbed down to the rocky shore that encircled swirling, deep blue waters. As we hiked, Jane railed against the injustice of a world that had given Peter so much pain.

  “How many times does he have to go through this?” she asked. “It isn’t fair.”

  I had no answer. I had been finding it especially cruel that the tumour was encroaching on the two areas of Peter’s body that had never given him trouble: his back and his heart. Jane’s anger reminded me of my own, and of a video I’d seen on Facebook. An interviewer asked the British comedian Stephen Fry what he’d say if he ever met God at the pearly gates. And Fry had let it rip. He had no truck with a god that gave children bone cancer and made people kneel before him while there was so much injustice and suffering in the world. Watching Fry’s indignation had been cathartic, so I listened as Jane ranted, hoping that would ease her suffering, too.

  Later, in the afternoon, Jane came into the great room where Peter sat in his favourite chair. She told him she was feeling sad. He gave her the same advice he and I had been giving each other: We had to give ourselves moments to be sad and angry. But we also had to remember we had so much good in our lives.

  “Don’t you ever think it’s unfair?” she asked him.

  “I have so much that so many people could never have,” he answered her, gesturing to the garden past the windows.

  He made it clear he wasn’t giving up. He told us both that evening he was working on an outline for his thriller.

  “When can we see it?” Jane asked.

  “I’ll send it to you both by the end of the week.”

  Before I took Jane to catch her train, I made our traditional end-of-summer treat, bruschetta with olive oil and tomatoes, basil, garlic, and a bit of red onion, all from the garden. I always add a dash of sea salt and a splash of balsamic vinegar. It’s a recipe we all liked. Whenever we ordered bruschetta in a restaurant, Jane or Peter or both would say, “It’s good, but yours is better.”

  That evening, I scooped the mixture onto Melba canapés instead of grilled bread, hoping Peter could eat more pieces that way. Even so, he ate only some of the topping from one piece while Jane and I hurriedly ate the rest. I bit down on my disappointment. When I’d come up with the idea of creating a Victory Garden the previous fall, the image I’d carried in my head for months was of such a summer evening with the three of us savouring our favourite appetizer, with Peter free of cancer, his appetite for food and life strong.

  Two days later I faced a dilemma. We had no news about the feeding tube or the condition of Peter’s heart. We were no closer to treatment. I had a meeting in Toronto that afternoon with my group of supportive and talented women writers. It was a meeting I’d come to think of as essential, and I knew I’d probably have to miss other times once Peter started treatment or, if worst came to worst, there was nothing more that could be done for him.

  That morning, Peter was on the deck. When he wasn’t staring out into the yard, he dozed, his head bent. When I came out with a coffee, he encouraged me to go to Toronto, said that he had his phone in his pocket if anyone called, that he’d be all right, that he’d ask our neighbours for help if he needed anything. He said he’d
made a call to the nurse who worked with Dr. D to see if there was something stronger than the laxatives he was using to get his digestive system working and he’d text me when he heard back and let me know if I needed to pick up any medication on the way home. I had given him the chapter I’d written about the garden and our lives in August that I was going to pass out to my group, and I asked him if there was anything he didn’t want me to include.

  “No,” he said. “It’s your story.”

  I wasn’t convinced.

  “But is there anything you don’t want me saying about you?”

  “No,” he answered. “I’m fine with it all. It’s good.”

  I got to the meeting in record time but felt distracted, impatient to get back on the road and home. I left early enough to avoid rush hour, I thought, but I still hit heavy traffic that made my progress slow and my heart race with worry. Peter had texted to say he was fine and there’d been no news. I stopped in Grimsby to pick up a few foods that he still enjoyed. There was a good antibiotic-free chicken pot pie and I texted him to see if he wanted it. By the time I got home, I was so famished I thought I’d put it in the oven for both of us.

  But Peter didn’t want any of it. He said he wasn’t hungry; he was feeling too gassy to eat. He suggested I cook the pie and he’d eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. I didn’t bother — said I’d bake it fresh for him the next day — and began to put the groceries away and fuss with some laundry. I watched Peter get up and go to the small washroom off our great room. Then I heard a groan.

  “What is it?” I asked through the closed door.

  He came out almost staggering and I could hear him wheezing. I worried that the trouble with his digestive system had reached a critical level. Neither of us had wanted to take him to emergency, where he’d have to repeat his medical history yet again, be probed by doctors intrigued by his past. As had happened every time he’d had to go to the hospital.

  He had kept telling me he felt like his body would work again soon, but now, with one look at him, I knew something horrible was happening. “Should I get you to the hospital?” I said.

  “Give me a few minutes,” he answered and walked back to his chair. But he’d barely sat down before he said, “Call an ambulance.”

  I told the ambulance dispatcher my husband was in distress and gave her a quick summary of what Peter had been going through.

  “Is he hot or clammy?” she asked.

  I rushed over to touch Peter’s forehead. “Clammy,” I said.

  Peter sighed irritably and the dispatcher said an ambulance was on its way. Past his chair, I could see the garden through the large picture window, looking normal, calm, and beautiful. It might as well have been a distant planet. Peter continued to groan.

  “They’re on their way,” I told him, which made him grunt more. He always hated when people said things like “We’re almost there.”

  I didn’t know what was happening to him, but he didn’t seem to want to talk and I didn’t push for answers. I walked to the front door several times, and after what seemed like just a few minutes, saw the ambulance in our driveway. Peter was impatient with the attendants as they attached cords to him and tried to get him to stand up. They pushed furniture out of the way before they supported him to the stretcher.

  “I’m feeling incontinent,” he said and somehow the accuracy of his vocabulary made me think he would be all right.

  “It doesn’t matter,” one of the two attendants said.

  Peter argued with them as they tried to buckle him into the stretcher. “I don’t want to lie down,” he said angrily.

  “Sir, you have to lie back before we can put you in the ambulance.” The male attendant turned to me then and told me to gather Peter’s meds for them and then follow the ambulance in my car to the hospital. “Take your time. Drive carefully.”

  By the time I had the medications and Peter’s health card in a bag, they had won the argument and were wheeling Peter out the front door. I followed and saw my neighbour M cross the street. She hugged me, and before I could tell her what was going on, the female driver hopped out of the ambulance and said, “The way he’s presenting, you should come with us.”

  I nodded and went back into the house for a bottle of water because my throat was parched, and then I stopped to lock the front door. “C’mon,” the driver said, rolling her eyes. It was only when I walked to the passenger side of the ambulance that I saw the male attendant pumping Peter’s chest through the back doors.

  With the siren whining, we drove down our street and onto the highway to the hospital in St. Catharines. The female driver used her radio to request assistance of some kind. A television monitor at the top of the windshield showed Peter on the stretcher in the back and the attendant bent over him. “Peter, Peter,” the attendant said repeatedly as he massaged Peter’s heart.

  “Has his heart stopped?” I asked the driver. I asked the question as if I were someone else, not as someone whose loved one could be dying, not as someone whose life could soon be shattered.

  The attendant was vague, or maybe I didn’t want to hear her. Instead, my practical side kicked in. Jane needed to be here; I had to tell Jane what was going on and figure out a way to get her to the hospital. I phoned her and told her I was in an ambulance and Peter wasn’t doing well. Then I called my brother in Toronto to see if he could pick her up and bring her to me. He had guests and had had a couple of drinks, it turned out, but my niece was there and she offered to drive Jane. I called our new friends in town, H and A, and left a message.

  Halfway down the highway, the attendant in the back asked the driver to stop and come help him. With the siren still on, the red light spreading patterns over the hood, I sat alone in the front staring at the monitor with the two bent over Peter in the back. Another ambulance pulled in behind them and a third attendant climbed into the back.

  I called Jane to tell her about the pickup arrangements; I tried to keep the fear from my voice. How was I able to act so calmly when everything seemed to be falling apart? Was I incapable of really living this moment? I felt like I was in a movie of someone else’s life. From my high vantage point in the ambulance, I watched cars drive by, measured the looks on faces. Were they sympathetic, curious, averse to noticing the drama? It somehow offended me that they didn’t seem to care about me or Peter, although I’m certain I’ve passed many ambulances with the same disregard.

  Then we were back on the road. In an attempt to stay in control, I talked to the driver about her route, which didn’t seem the shortest way to the hospital to me. She said it was the one where she was most unlikely to encounter traffic, so I sat back quietly staring up at the monitor, the attendant still massaging Peter’s heart. I tried to send Peter silent messages. Hang in there. I’m here with you. We hadn’t had a moment at the house to say anything real to each other.

  When we pulled up to the emergency department and I stepped out of the ambulance, attendants were already rushing to the back door and a man in green scrubs came up to me. “Does he have a do-not-resuscitate order?”

  I stood stock-still. “What? We’ve never talked about end-of-life issues.” I paused before adding, “But he wants to fight this cancer, so do what you can.” I didn’t ask what that involved or what state Peter was in. Sometimes I just don’t ask the right questions, but the man in green seemed to accept my answer and hospital staff whisked Peter away.

  Someone ushered me into a small room in the emergency wing where the ambulance driver and a nurse came to sit with me. I tried to converse. “What is your name?” I asked the driver.

  “Taylor,” she answered. An odd name for a woman, I thought, but I didn’t ask why she’d been given it. I was all out of questions.

  The man in green came into the room and sat across from me. He was the emergency doctor, a young man with a Muslim name on his tag. Irrationally, I wanted to tell him that I’d written a book about Muslim refugees, that I wasn’t anti-Muslim. As if somehow, if he li
ked me, he could perform a miracle. Thankfully, I kept my mouth shut. Some filters were still working. The doctor told me they had started Peter’s heart, but the procedure was quite violent and they had broken some ribs. And I wondered what I had done.

  “I know you can’t advise me,” I said before the doctor could say anything else. I wanted his advice; I needed some guidance.

  “Yes, I can,” he said hurriedly. I waited. “We can keep his heart going,” he said, “but the outcome will be the same. His heart is likely damaged and he’s probably suffered neurological damage.” I didn’t hear all his other words, but “will not recover” was among them. Will not recover. In other words, will die or be in some horrible state. It was the idea of neurological damage that disturbed me most. Not his brain. Not his brain. His heart, his back, and now his brain. He was a brilliant man. His inquisitive, analytical, absorbing mind had given him great joy in life, eased his suffering through the worst of times, earned him the greatest respect. I couldn’t leave him this way.

  We must be capable of computer-speed calculations in such moments. I thought of Jane and whether I should keep Peter alive until she got there. I thought of the added pain I might have caused Peter. I thought of how he would hate to know his brain was damaged. And I came to a decision in a flash. I told the doctor I wanted their interference stopped and I wanted to be with Peter. He told me to give them a few minutes and then I could sit beside Peter until he died and as long after as I wanted.

  Peter was lying on a bed, covered with a blanket up to the top of his chest. His mouth was open and there was blood around the corners of his lips. The nurse wiped his mouth before she left me alone with him. Peter’s favourite summer shirt, white with a blue and brown criss-cross pattern, had been cut with scissors; it bunched up around his neck. It was a shirt that popped up in our travel photos from warm places. In the best shot I’d taken of Peter on our Santa Fe trip, he’d been wearing that shirt with one side of the collar poking out over a blue sweater that matched his eyes, smiling at me with deep love.