Thursday, when I told a friend that I was reading Joyce Maynard’s book, The Best of Us, she asked what it was about. I told her that it was about her husband’s diagnosis and death from pancreatic cancer. “Stop that,” she told me. “Don’t do that depressing stuff.”
“it’s not depressing,” I told her. “It’s affirming, reassuring.”
My husband has a form of blood cancer. This summer has been physically challenging for him, emotionally challenging for me (and probably him, but it’s not like him to say). In early June, when my Jim (Joyce Maynard’s husband is also Jim) was down to 144 lbs., it was a wake-up call for me. When he hit 124 lbs. in August, I was nearly numb to it. In one passage, Joyce talked about her Jim hitting 108 lbs. then 90 lbs. My Jim is up to 137 right now and for the first time in our 32 years, showing that he can gain weight as fast as me. The game of “weigh less than your man” is back on!
She describes being an advocate for her Jim. I know that every patient needs an advocate having done this for my Jim and for my cousin Dolly and years ago for my mother.
Her story of their meeting, her resistance to the notion of being a couple after they had both been single for decades. His proposal, buying a ring, and her response that he shouldn’t have spent the money. He was crushed at the time, but today when the ring sparkles, she thinks of him.
The crazy adventures she dragged him on before he was too sick to go. Her quirky personality and the way he found that not just OK but engaging perfectly. I read recently that true love is possible when the broken pieces of two people fit together. Maybe that’s what they found.
Joyce seamlessly blends their love story with the story of their loss. Little by little, their lives, so big in the beginning, got smaller and smaller. He didn’t want to leave her, and she didn’t want him to go. In the end, she didn’t promise there would never be another, only that she would always love him.
Not depressing. She described him, herself, the process. She helped me understand that while “No one gets to tell you how to do this,” as my friend Dale said, there is a commonality of experience. Yet, it is still as uniquely individual as the couple taking the journey together.
