Full Recovery Ch. 1

Cancer. To Pete it was the ugliest word he could think of, uglier than any profanity he could utter. Cancer. The disease that had taken his wife Jenny five years before. Cancer. And now the word he was going to have to say out loud to their daughter Olivia.

As the news from his urologist sunk in, as he read and waded through the biopsy report, he realized that his high PSA count hadn’t been an accident. The CT scan hadn’t been wrong. He had prostate cancer and he had to deal with it. But as the news sunk in he realized the disease wasn’t the worst part. Telling Olivia was.

Five years. Five years since Jenny died. Five years of grief and emptiness. And it was a long time before Pete realized and understood, blinded by his own grief, that Olivia, their only child, was hurting almost as much as he was. No; hurting even more, as her marriage to Andrew finally ended. “Short term pain for long term gain”, she’d said, smiling through her tears as she told Pete. “Dad, it had been coming for a long time. Andrew seemed to withdraw more and more. First it was his job; he seemed to bury himself in his work and I think it was an excuse to avoid us. Then I think – no, I know – it was something…or someone…else. It didn’t surprise me that within a couple of months of leaving he’d moved in with one of his secretaries.”

And there it was; Pete thought back to those first years after Jenny’s passing, how despite her own grief, despite having to deal with her separation and divorce, Olivia was always there for him, always checking in to see how he was doing, always sensing when he was having a particularly bad patch, quick to be there with him, smoothing over the pain. It took him a while to realize how precious she was, how much he was loved. And how much he loved her.

She had stayed with him for a couple of weeks after the funeral despite Pete’s assurances that “…I’m fine. I can manage on my own; I took care of your Mom for the last couple of years, I think I can take care of myself.” But, smart woman that she was, she ignored him and helped him reestablish a level of domestic routine until, satisfied that he was ok, Olivia and the boys returned to her house.

But a regular, comfortable routine began; most Fridays after school Olivia arrived at Pete’s home. Pete welcomed the visits and seemed to settle quickly into the routine, as Pete cooked for them and Olivia relaxed at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, recounting her week’s teaching adventures. Sometimes after dinner and a movie she returned home, but often an impromptu sleepover occurred, especially if more than usual wine had been consumed and Olivia returned to her old room, largely unchanged since she’d left. Her wall posters were the subject of many jibes from Pete, a welcome injection of humour as the years progressed.

Then, on those early weekends that she was particularly happy to relax with wine and dinner at Pete’s he said “don’t get me wrong, Ollie,” (his pet name for her), “I love having you hear and I’m happy to listen to your feelings about Andrew and her, but don’t you have, ummm, a friend, another woman to talk to? Maybe another woman who might understand?”

“Nonsense, Dad; you’re the best friend I have, always have been. And you know me better than anyone alive, probably. No, you’re my shrink, Dad, my confessor” and with that she took another long sip of her wine.

And with that a new routine arose; on virtually every Friday evening Olivia would arrive; always with an overnight bag, their unspoken assumption being that she would spend the weekend. And the new routine settled on them both like a warm duvet; domesticity grew between them (“It’s almost spousal”, Olivia remarked one afternoon as she prepared lunch while Pete vacuumed.