A shameless act of self promotion: my brush with death

I asked my wife not to tell the kids just yet. I didn’t for a minute expect that she would but it was just a reason to say something else while I was speaking with her. I wanted to keep her on the line but I really had nothing more to say.

“Hey honey, by the way I’ve got the cancer!” seems not to foster much in the way of conversation I must say. We hung up and I went back to feeling gloomy.

A sat there quietly for a while. I rang my wife again for no real reason. I said I would go and see the priest. I felt I had to tell someone else. After all this was, no matter how bad, exciting news. I have no idea why I felt that way but the information was too much for me to contain.

I even had second thoughts about telling him. I mean people must dump this sort of problem at his doorstep daily. So who am I to add to his burden? Perhaps I would be better off just shutting up and getting on with things.

In spite of all that I still felt I needed someone other than my wife to unload on if things started to escalate. Who better than the parish priest?

I left work early that day, full of myself, full of self-pity and full of drama. I drove back towards Benalla in order to see the priest only to find him not at home. Damn. Just like policemen. Priests are never there when you need them. I should have gone to a Rotary meeting that night also, but to be frank I just couldn’t be stuffed.

I arrived home around 6pm. The girls were out. Denise and I just recapped what we had said earlier. I felt I had nothing else to say. And if she did I figured she didn’t know how to say it.

I told Denise she needed to find someone to talk to about this also. I thought, like me, she might need a third party with whom she could spill her guts if she had to.

She said she would tell her boss at work, particularly if she needed to take time off. There might be medical appointments and what-have-you for me to attend and she would probably like to tag along.

That night Denise went to her Rotary meeting. Denise is a member in the town where we live while I am member in the town where I work. As Denise left for her meeting she asked me if I wanted her to bring home a bottle of wine to have while we watched TV later that evening. I was sure that my Lenten commitment could be relaxed under the circumstances

“Sure”, I said. “Why not?”

She asked me what to get. “Anything” I said. She pressed me further “Red? White?”