Paris Without Her: A Memoir by Gregory Curtis

Author:Gregory Curtis [Curtis, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780525657620
Google: kxjzDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0525657622
Published: 2021-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

The Woman in Saint-Eustache

CHAPTER NINE

Santons and Randonnées

Often, in the weeks and months after her death, in idle moments in my office during the day or while watching my magic DVDs in the evening, I ruminated on the care Tracy had received at MD Anderson. Had those final weeks of painful treatments in Houston, which often left her glum and disoriented, been a big mistake? And what about the hours of driving, and the displacement from our own comfortable home, and her missing the congenial, reassuring company of our children and our friends, all of which made her final weeks lonely and isolated? Had all that effort and all that trouble been worth it? I thought often of that phone call from the cancer survivor, which I never mentioned to her or anyone else. I came to believe that the doctors should have made the very probable futility of her treatments clearer than they did. I even wrote a respectful letter saying so to her principal physician. Our oldest daughter, Liza, says that I shouldn’t think that way, that Tracy wanted the treatment no matter what and never wavered from that, even during the hardest days and the darkest hours. She is probably right. I was always going to let Tracy have her way. I had let her have her way throughout our marriage, so why not now? That’s the main reason I kept the phone call to myself. But my unquiet thoughts remained, as well as resentment toward the doctors for making her final days miserable for no very good reason. This remorse and these recriminations are one way my sadness emerged. I felt that sadness as a thudding vibration that penetrated clear through me.

But that was only sadness. I could carry on in spite of it. Real grief arrived as a horrible, ghastly panic that could rise in a single moment, and without warning, from somewhere in the depths within me. I would become hopelessly and helplessly despondent as the waves of grief rolled over me. My stomach contracted painfully, and I thought my head would burst. Sometimes I would call one of our daughters, who were always calm and comforting. But often I didn’t want to burden them, and during those times alone I never knew how to mitigate the attacks. I just had to let them run on until I was completely exhausted. A random thought or a song lyric or a phrase in a book would make me erupt in uncontrollable tears. That continued for several years—less frequently as time went on, but with no less intensity when the agony did arrive. I’m sure grief is not through with me yet. It will come again, although I don’t know when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year or in five years, but it will come.

When someone in your family is ill, you soon learn to stay clear of well-meaning casual acquaintances. They want to show their concern, so they trap you and ask a series

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