Chapter 18

Brent Gordon was by nature an optimist. He believed that somehow, someway, Jeanette would beat back the cancer, and they could resume their normal lives. But what was normal any more? Radiation therapy once a month, and chemotherapy if no progress were made after that? Was that to be normal? Was her disease responsible for her crazy decision to take a job as a dancer at a strip club? She didn't seem to know herself. Somehow, she had created logic to support her reckless choice.

Brent went back to work, burying himself in his new office in the bowels of the paper converting plant. If he wasn't reclusive, he was certainly not very visible. Few, if any of his fellow employees did not know of his humiliation at hands of Ron Dixon on Brent's fortieth birthday, but he shook off the early stares and whispers and concentrated on his job. Product development was important to Mountain Pine, and he had ideas to develop and concepts to test. It helped only slightly to take his mind off Jeanette and her gradual deterioration.

When her doctor recommended they switch her treatments to chemotherapy, Brent and Jeanette both knew that the cancer had progressed. There was a finality about the decision. It was their last hope for a cure, or at least some remission. Jeanette continued to show her strength as she underwent the cruel and painful consequences of the aggressive treatments. She was brave, never complaining and always optimistic that this time, this time it would work.

Her loss of hair had occurred with the surgery, and that it did not grow back was a side effect of the 'chemo' treatments. At first, Jeanette wore a scarf tied around her head, but after a while, when she no longer could go out in public, she didn't bother. If she were cold, sitting on the deck and trying to enjoy the outdoors, she would wear a wool stocking cap pulled down over her ears.

Her appetite dwindled to the point where she was eating only what she was forced to eat when the doctor threatened to hospitalize her and feed her intravenously. The smell of food cooking in the kitchen was enough to make her nauseous. She no longer had favorite foods. They were all the same, an unpleasant necessity.

The children faced the decline in their mother with a stoic determination, but it was eroding their spirits as well. Andrea appeared to be the most controlled, tending to her mother at every opportunity, sitting by her side and talking to her when Brent was not there. Scott, on the other hand, was almost avoiding his mother. He was having difficulty facing her, seeing the visible signs of her illness and declining health. He would force himself to spend time with her, but afterward he was withdrawn and moody, unable to come to terms with the inevitable.

As the weeks passed, it became clear that neither regimen of treatments had halted or even slowed the progress of the tumor. Jeanette's weight declined from a healthy one hundred twenty pounds to barely one hundred, then fell even further into the low nineties as time passed. At that point the doctor stopped weighing her.

It was the signal that Brent had dreaded. The doctors had given up. There would be no rescue, no last minute reprieve. He was going to lose Jeanette. He took another leave of absence from Mountain Pine as the end came near. Brent sat by her side, holding her frail hand as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Her eyes had sunken into her skull and the dark surrounding flesh made her look otherworldly.

Brent had hired a live-in nurse, tending to her as best she could, but time was running out. On a cold autumn morning in October, Jeanette O'Leary Gordon, failed to wake up. It was over. Brent sat in his rocking chair beside the bed, holding her cold, lifeless hand, his eyes closed, rocking back in forth, wondering what would come next. How would he carry on without her?

Andrea was on the floor, beside the bed, weeping silently in her grief. Scott was in his room, racked with sobs and the pain of the loss of his mother. He, like his father, had hoped that his mother would recover, but now he knew that it wasn't to be.

Brent sat in the front pew of St. David's Anglican Church, listening absently as Reverend Oliver Thomas gave the eulogy. Beside him were Andrea on his left and Scott on his right. His eyes were dry and his mind was blank. He had used up all his tears in the last seven months. It was over and his beloved Jeanette was gone. To the very end he held out hope for a cure, or at least remission. It never happened. When Jeanette died, he lost the one thing that had allowed him to carry on, his sense of hope. He had always been one to have faith in the future, but that faith had now abandoned him.

Andrea was holding Grandmother O'Leary's hand as she sat quietly during the service. She could still cry for her lost mother, but she had a new role to play now. Her father and brother needed her. They couldn't do it alone and she would have to be the strong one. She grieved for her mother, but she feared for her father. He seemed so lost now. She had to help him in any way she could. That's what happens when people die, other people have to take over. She had no doubt that it was her responsibility.