Cam is finding it difficult to smile today, it’s too much effort and hurts her cheeks. During summer, things are slower at Skidmore College. The hours are shorter, the workload is lighter. The kids trickle in for appointments like the drip, drip, drip, of a broken faucet. So she could get away with being distracted while barely mustering anything resembling interest at the weekly staff meeting.
“Cami?”
Cam looks up from her empty notepad to meet the gazes of her colleagues, who all wear matching, expectant expressions. Like she’s stopped a joke halfway through and they were all waiting for the punchline.
“Hm?” She asks with one of those smiles.
You can only hold a smile for so long, after a while, it’s all just teeth
“You ok?”
“Oh,” Cam’s fingers tap her pen, debating on how to answer. She knows they wouldn’t be upset if she outright admitted with a self-deprecating joke she zoned out. No one in her department was a drill sergeant. But after this morning’s events, Cam needs to feel in control of something.
So she merely nods, “I’m fine, sounds great!” While silently praying the topic wasn’t something along the lines of “So and so had a death in the family,” or Thomas is going through another break-up, wants to bring back jorts for a new, improved, Thomas and he needed opinions.
The meeting ends and Cam retreats to her office where she flops down on the small loveseat situated on one wall. Her phone alerts her with a new message (which is promptly ignored after reading it) and the words make her see red. Then another comes in,, but this time from Wyatt, which happens to coincide with a flower delivery (also from him) that makes Cam burst into tears at the abrupt, almost violent shift in emotions it causes. But at least they’re happy tears. Fifteen minutes later, she schedules an appointment with her therapist for the following day.
denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance
The five stages of grief look different on everyone. at times, isolating, then gently taking turns. Other times, they like to gang up, treating cami like the ball in a pinball machine.
anger
“what do you mean dad has cancer?” cami’s voice is immediately annoyed. “what do you mean you have cancer?” this time, the question is angry disbelief and upon realizing she’s now on speaker phone, louder.
“we’ve known for a month, and we didn’t want - ” her dad begins.
“A MONTH? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”
“camilla, calm down - ”
cami hangs up the phone and throws it across her bedroom. suddenly, she’s ten years old, crying in her room. furious at her dad for not letting her go to megan riley’s sleepover because her parents let them watch an r-rated movie last time. sad because often, he was the only one who could make her laugh no matter her mood. five minutes pass, then ten. she picks up her phone and calls her parents back. as her dad’s voice comes over the line,cami whispers “dad,” and then her words fracture and she swallows hard. “I’m sorry…”
denial
“So there’s a chance he could survive right? People survive this. You hear about it all the time,” cami pauses, scouring her brain for one of the many articles she’s read the past two months, a podcast she’s listened to. one of those “so-and-so-beat-cancer-they–just-climbed-mt-everest” miracle cancer urban legends passed around her neighborhood. If it looks like cami hasn’t slept in days, it’s because she barely has. Her dad joked she looked worse than he did. Her co-workers urged her to take more time off from work.
The doctor seated across from her barely flinches at the desperation in her voice. At 50-years-old, Vanessa Ramirez was the second oncologist cami’s dad had been to, the one cami’s mom finally declared was the right fit. Her bedside manner was far from cuddly, but that’s not what the flores family needed. They needed capable, not teddy bear.
“I mean, this can’t just be it. He’s never smoked a day in his life. The last time we went running, he left me in the dust while i dry heaved near a tree. He’s healthy.”
In a rare moment of warmth (cami reminds vanessa so much of her own daughter), the doctor leans across her walnut stained desk and squeezes cami’s hand. her response is calm and measured, “camilla, we’ve talked about this. but let me go over his prognosis again.”
anger
“You seem irritable today Camilla, why are you here?”
“Because I promised my dad I’d attend one of these. I should be with him, not eating sawdust cookies and choking down shit coffee.” The cookies were actually delicious, but Cami was too set in acting like a petulant asshole at the cancer support group her dad urged her to attend.
As the other members told their own stories, the anger mingled with shame. There was the young pregnant woman who spoke about the slow unraveling of her husband’s health as he battled stage four pancreatic cancer. The son whose mother was recently diagnosed and he had to quit school and move back home to be her sole care taker. Cami thought of the aunts and uncles and family and friends who stopped by to support the flores family and her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. Which somehow, only made her inexplicably angrier.
when the group took a short break, cami left and sat in her car to call her dad. She thanked him for encouraging her to attend the group and with false gaiety, reassured him she felt a lot better after.
bargaining
For weeks, cami made little silent deals with whoever was listening. she gave up alcohol. She gave up chocolate (ok, she gave it up during the week). She made promises and prayed to a god she had a rocky situationship with. First they were on, then they were on a break. “Dear god please, if I do this…” was thought more than once only to become irrationally upset because she felt left on read by them and completely ghosted.
acceptance
Cami and her dad sat on the couch in her childhood home. He was dozing quietly beside her, head on her shoulder. He had her poorly knit blanket wrapped around his thin frame and when she looked at him, cami winced. Not at his appearance but at how awful the blanket turned out. Usually, she was 2-3 glasses of red in when she worked on it at night and it showed in the uneven sides, the too tight tension in the yarn throughout. Her mom had gone out to get them dinner. The tv was just loud enough for cami to hear and her dad to sleep through. “What is 1984?” cami mumbled to herself only for one of her dad’s eyes to peek open. “Wrong. 1989. You were always bad at history, mija.” she rolled her eyes and went back to working on her latest project, a red scarf, the quiet cadence of needles clacking making her sigh softly. Today, cami felt ok.
depression
Cami smelled. Her hair was a greaseball. She could taste the sourness of her red wine breath and winced. She was starving and yet the very idea of ingesting anything other than a liquid diet made her want to vomit. Love Is Blind was paused on the tv behind her, netflix rudely reminding her how long it’d been running and did she want to continue to wallow on her depression couch or did she want to go out and touch grass? Maybe shower? Put on fresh clothes? Her phone buzzed once, then twice with texts. Cami glanced at it, saw it was a text from her mom, followed by one from her sister. She hit the continue button on the remote and then turned over on her side, the sounds of strangers falling in love lulling her back to sleep.
acceptance
“officially a year. today i thought of you and only felt happiness, not sorrow. i just wanted to tell you that.”