To Sir, With Love

Have you ever seen this movie?

When I was little, my Mémère showed it to me, and it left quite an impression. If you haven't seen it, I'll give a very brief synopsis but I won't do it justice (you have to see it). It's a 1967 movie starring Sidney Poitier as a high school teacher. He is in charge of a group of ruffians, just about to graduate high school. The kids are totally disrespectful and and he soon realizes that the information they need isn't in the books they can barely read - he needs to prepare them to be adults. They start out having absolutely no respect for him, blah blah, he starts treating them like adults, blah blah, they eventually come to admire and respect him, and it's a very touching story.

There is also a song by the same name, sung by Lulu, and it's the theme song to the movie. Anyway, for some reason I keep thinking of this song, especially the line right before the refrain - "How do you thank someone..." (the rest of it, which is not relevant to my post is "who has taken you from crayons to perfume..." then "It isn't easy, but I'll try..."). I think it's quite a beautiful song.

Anyway, what the heck am I talking about? Well, my mom told me I should try writing nice things (undoubtedly in reference to my not-so-nice post a week ago), and I told her that was unrealistic ;-) Then I remembered that I did complain about not getting any blog ideas, and here she was kind of giving me an idea. So, I decided to write about a nice thing for a change. This is something I've been wanting to write about for awhile, but wasn't sure how to do it.

When this song gets stuck in my head, it's because I'm wondering how you thank someone who you feel you can never ever repay for all that they have done for you. This describes several people in my life, but for this post I want to focus on Rusty. This is not to say he's the only person who has helped me. So don't be disappointed if I didn't call you out. See? That's why I told my mom I couldn't write nice things, because then people would wonder why I didn't write nice things about them. If I write mean things, no one gets jealous or upset that I didn't write about them :-)

Anyway, the spouse tends to get lost in the shuffle of a cancer patient. I don't even know how Rusty must feel. No one ever asks him. He's there for everything. He stays home from work every time I have an appointment - even if it's just to get a bone marrow booster (essentially a 15 minute appointment the day after chemo). At first, he didn't let me lift a finger at home. Then I felt it was starting to make my muscles atrophy, so I insisted that he let me do some things around the house. And he has.

When I go to the spa to get a massage or a pedicure, Rusty is at home mowing the lawn or painting the outside of the house. When I am sitting on the couch blogging, Rusty gets me more water or whatever else I need. When he's helping me make dinner, he actually makes sure he's cutting the onions exactly the way I want him to cut them. When I am feeling really crappy, he listens to all of my symptoms and offers encouragement. When I go into what I call "full-on freakout mode," he remains calm, lets the process run its course, then tries to bring me back to reality. (I don't know if that ever happens to you, but for me it's when I've been stewing about something in my head for a little while, and then I see the coffee table filled with clutter and the laundry that hasn't been folded in 3 days, and all of a sudden I just lose it and stress out about every single little thing. Am I alone here? And don't tell me it's PMS because I don't have that anymore with chemo - OKAY?! Wait, nice things...)

Anyway, Rusty handles these things like a trooper. He doesn't complain. He loves to go to music festivals in the summer, and he hasn't been to one this year. He got his first haircut in about 10 years to support me. Some men leave their wives over stuff like this because it's too much to handle, and I can only say that this experience has actually caused us to refocus and deepen our relationship. And speaking of deepening relationships, he and my mom have spent a lot more time together. I shouldn't speak for them, but I think it has made them understand, know, and like each other better, too. Some men wouldn't be that way with their mother-in-law, but he's happy to have her with us and it means so much to me, too.

So how do you thank someone who is there for you no matter what? No one signs up for this in life. I didn't sign up for it, either, but it's different when it's happening to you. As a spouse, I can imagine that at times he must feel helpless or frustrated or lost. And those are feelings I don't have, because whether I like it or not I'm an active participant in this.

I don't mean to suggest that this surprises me. It's not like being this way is uncharacteristic of him, but it still makes my heart melt. I don't know how I could ever thank him enough for just being himself - the person who promised to be with me in sickness, but who probably didn't really expect it to happen that way.

That's about all I've got. It's a lot easier to write mean things because I think they're funny.