Too early?

So much in life depends on timing. An otherwise perfect punchline, kiss, or investment, if done too soon or too late, can fail miserably. Before the small c came into our life, SW and I would often remark at the seemingly terrible timing of parents who came on morning news shows after tragedy struck their child.

We would look at these grieving people and wonder what would compel them to share these intimate and terrible feelings with the world. Maybe down the road, when it's not so raw. We always assumed that these parents did it out of some knee-jerk desire to over-share in this age of facebook and reality TV. It seemed almost obscene. 

But now SW and I find ourselves engaged in some form of this behavior. She has her blog and I have mine here. In both we share pretty intimate details of our situation. And not only that, but when I'm at work and I see a colleague for the first time since SB's diagnosis and surgery and they ask how I'm doing, I'll almost always launch into SB's story. It rarely even matters how well we know each other. 

I've been concerned from the beginning that when I do this, and when I write on this blog, that I'm needlessly exposing myself and my family, that it's just too soon to write and talk to those who aren't very close to us, that I might be just fishing for sympathy. 

In honesty, I can't rule out any of these possibilities. But I don't think that any of these accurately describes what I'm feeling when I share our unfolding story. In those one-on-one interactions with people I haven't seen since the diagnosis, I feel compelled to say something about SB because it permeates every part of my life now, and I feel that they need to know that something has fundamentally changed for me. It's as though I can only relate to another person if they can recognize that change. (And strangely there are people I've told who seem not to register the tectonic nature of this change; in this case, we just can't relate.)

But more broadly, I think the desire to share an experience like this is an almost instinctual recognition that its potentially devastating and world-shattering effects need to be repaired, and this repairing is done through talking about what is broken, missing, and dissonant. By recognizing what is shattered and what fissures have opened in our world, we can at least begin to acknowledge our new reality and make a new home here. And in rare instances, we are even able to invite others in.