The ER doctor is Grey’s Anatomy–level hot, the kind of tall, corn-fed good looks you really only see in Midwestern men. I have my suspicions, at first, that he is just pretending to be a doctor, some sort of hired eye candy the hospital sends to particularly tense situations just to add a little sexiness to the atmosphere. He listens carefully while Aaron describes his last seizure, and orders up an emergency MRI, bumping Aaron to the top of the list.
“Is it just me . . . ,” I say after Dr. McDreamy leaves the room.
“No, he’s hot,” Aaron interjects, “but cool your jets, I’m not dead yet.”
This time, I don’t follow Aaron in a wheelchair. They push him down there in his bed, just like that milky-eyed old man we’d seen three years ago. I wonder whatever became of that guy, though I think I know the answer.
JUST LAST NIGHT, I’D LEFT Ralph in the care of my friend Evan while Aaron slept in our bedroom. I wanted to get a workout in, to sweat and move and take my mind off the fact that every day, my husband was slipping further and further away. I needed those deadlifts and snatches and kettlebell swings physically as much as I did mentally. The left side of Aaron’s body was getting weaker and weaker. His left arm hung useless in a sling I bought for a couple dollars at CVS. His left leg was beginning to follow suit, dragging behind him and giving him the look of a very well-dressed zombie. He slept about twenty hours a day, and when I got home from work I’d grab his good hand like we were about to arm wrestle, hook my other arm under his armpit, and lift him up so he could hang out with us in the living room or the kitchen.
“Fucking pathetic,” he’d say.
“No, you’re not,” I’d whisper, trying not to cry while we shuffled our way out of the bedroom.
“Not me!” he’d say. “You! You’re still such a weakling! I weigh, like, thirty pounds and you can barely lift me!”
While I was up in the gym just working on my fitness, Aaron was having a violent seizure, crumbling to the floor in our living room while Evan served Ralph a second helping of macaroni and cheese. When Aaron woke, he insisted that Evan not call me at all. It would ruin my night, he insisted, I’d rush home instead of finishing my workout. Like any good friend, Evan didn’t call me, but when I texted him to see how things were going, he spilled the beans and I drove home feeling stupid and selfish for prioritizing my mom butt over my dying husband. I found Aaron in the bathroom, where he’d asked Evan to leave him.
“Hey, Nornia,” he said, smiling up at me from his slumped position against the bathtub, “how was your workout?”
He insisted he was fine, even after I cleaned him up and changed his clothes and put him to bed, his entire left side, from his face to his toes, almost completely paralyzed.
Aaron was not fine, but we told each other he was, just as we always had. I went downstairs to put in the laundry and called his doctor on the emergency line.
We affectionately referred to Aaron’s oncologist as Dr. Mustache from day one. He has, as you may guess, facial hair that is downright Seussical, but that is the only whimsical thing about him. This man is a nerd, a brain tumor nerd, a man I like to imagine has one interest and one interest only: killing brain tumors. And, perhaps on weekends, building model train sets. If he’s going to have an imaginary hobby, I want it to be something precise. Falconry would be a suitable alternative. Dr. Mustache has a collection of button-down shirts, each monogrammed with his initials. He speaks clearly and directly at every appointment, but to Aaron only, occasionally handing me a box of tissues in anticipation of bad news. It’s nearly ten o’clock when I call him, and I imagine him in a clean, spare house somewhere on the south side of the city, perhaps eating a small bowl of cereal as a late-night snack. There is something about his voice—particularly its steady sternness—that gives me comfort, and makes me long for my father. I apologize for crying, and he tells me to wake up early tomorrow “or, whenever you want, really,” and take Aaron to the ER. “I don’t like this,” he tells me, “we need to see what’s going on.”
“It isn’t good,” I tell him.
“No,” he says, “it isn’t.”
I WAS RIGHT, AND SO was Dr. Mustache. An hour passes between when Aaron’s MRI is over and when we actually see a doctor again. “Has anyone stopped in here yet? Like, a doctor?” the nurses ask repeatedly, and I remember this same dance from Halloween 2011, hours of waiting for the right person to deliver the news you don’t want to hear. I hadn’t been there when they’d told Aaron about his brain tumor. I had run home—to the bachelor pad of Aaron’s that I’d just moved into—to grab the things you need for an unexpected night in the hospital: toothbrushes, pajamas, hoodies, basketball shorts, phone chargers, and warm socks. Our house had been filled with the evidence of the chaotic combination of our two lives. My mattress was still wedged into the kitchen, boxes of my books were stacked around the couch where a friend had crashed for the weekend, a pile of dirty dishes were half submerged in the cloudy water of our kitchen sink.
Where are you? Aaron had texted me as our friend drove my car from the highway and toward Aaron’s hospital bed. There’s something I need to tell you.
That’s the thing about bad news: it wants to be told in person. Or, it usually does. My mother once sent me an email that read:
Subject: Your uncle
Is dead. Funeral soon. Call me?
The weight of Aaron’s text sat with me on the long walk from the parking garage to his room, and when I walked into his room an audience of friends and family looked at me with eyes filled with tears and pity.
“I have a brain tumor,” he said, gently tapping above his right eye, and I climbed right into his lap, disturbing cords and blankets until my forehead was pressed against his.
“They think it’s small.”
“Your brain?”
“The tumor.”
“You’ll be okay.
“I will, we will.”
DR. MUSTACHE IS NOT IN today, but his nurse practitioner, a grandmotherly figure with the appearance of a Michael’s craft store enthusiast and the brain of a neuro-oncology genius, is unusually quiet when she parts the curtain to our room and steps in, his social worker just a few steps behind her. They both clean their hands with the antibacterial foam at the doorway. Sure, it’s a required habit for medical professionals, but it still strikes me as funny—like they have some germ that will kill Aaron faster than the cancer they’re about to tell him is finally killing him. But it’s habit, I’m sure, and also because you need to have something to do with your hands while you tell a person he is dying.
There is an art to the practice of telling a person that hospice is his only option. You may learn it from many years of motherhood as easily as you could through many years of an occupation dealing with death, but they’ve delivered this crushing news in a way that leaves Aaron and me feeling like this is a choice we’ve made, and not a death sentence we’ve been served.
“How do you feel?” his social worker, Margaret, asks him, and there is something about her, something so pure and good inside of her and her sweet voice, that we both begin to cry immediately, which is something we don’t typically do. But then again, neither is being told Aaron is going to die.
“I’m not afraid to die,” he tells her, “I just don’t want to do it.”
ONCE AARON HAS FINISHED HIS pancakes and I have finished my third cup of coffee, we go on with our lives. We pick up Ralph from day care, we feed him dinner, we watch a few hours of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and fall asleep holding hands.
I know for a fact that nobody cares about dreams but guess what? I’m going to tell you about a damn dream, okay? I dreamed my mother and I were caught in a flash flood that swept us up the street where I live, carrying us past parked cars and front yards that seemed untouched by the swell of water ripping down the street.
Just before we were washed clear across the park, my mother reached out and grabbed a rowboat and canoe from the curb of a neighbor’s house. In defense of my neighborhood, this isn’
t actually how my neighbors store their watercraft, it’s just one of those weird dream things. My mother took the rowboat, and I climbed into the canoe, where she tossed me a paddle and began to row her boat against the churning water, making slow progress toward my house.
I tried to follow, but paddling a canoe is a job for two, and I couldn’t get myself turned in the right direction.
“I can’t do it alone!” I cried, but she shook her head.
“Just paddle!” she shouted, and I felt my little vessel push back against the current trying to wash me away.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my big dumb family for giving me a childhood that was both charmed and traumatizing. I almost forgive you for forgetting that I played the saxophone. But not quite.
My mother is the definition of a bad bitch. Madge, thank you for showing me how to be a woman, for always (eventually) forgiving me, and for loving me mostly unconditionally.
Aaron was the best thing ever to happen to me (sorry, Ralph) and I will carry him with me forever.
Steve taught me to love reading and writing; he was a ruthless editor even to a child. I think he would be proud of this book and also appalled at some of the content, which is about par for the relationship we had.
My best friend, Dave Gilmore, has been a thoughtful reader since 2001, and has picked me up off the ground more times than I can count. I’m sorry for when you tried to teach me guitar and for every time I picked the movie.
To the coven of women who are there for me every day, thank you.
It takes a whole damn village to raise a child, and I’m lucky to have one. If you watched Ralph so I could write, or go to yoga, or get drunk . . . thank you. If you read my blog or wrote me an email or hugged me in public; if you’re my Internet troll: thank you. Haters are my motivators.
Julia Cheiffetz believed in me, and I’ll always be grateful to have had her guidance and patience. Thank you for getting me, and for laughing at my jokes.
Jessica Regel is an actual angel. Look it up.
Dana, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you. Thank you.
Ralph, thank you for being on my team, and making me a mom. Please stop telling me not to sing or dance, it’s starting to hurt my feelings.
About the Author
NORA McINERNY PURMORT was voted Most Humorous by the Annunciation Catholic School Class of 1998. It was mostly downhill after that, but she did get to spend three glorious years married to Aaron Joseph Purmort (aka Spider-Man). Her work has appeared on Cosmopolitan.com, Elle.com, and the Huffington Post, and in the Star Tribune. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her son, Ralph. They really like it there.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Credits
Cover design by Gabrielle Bordwin
Cover photograph © Paula Daniëlse / Getty Images
Copyright
IT’S OKAY TO LAUGH. Copyright © 2016 by Nora McInerny Purmort. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-241937-8
EPub Edition MAY 2016 ISBN 9780062419392
16 17 18 19 20 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
It's Okay to Laugh Page 21