Lies

At some point when I was little, I believed as most children do that everything grows on trees (or at least from some type of plant.) So it was one spring that I went outside and planted a lollipop stick at the base of an existing tree.  I don't know if it was the next morning or several mornings after, but I vividly remember walking outside one morning and seeing that tree covered in fresh lollipops. Of course, I eventually learned that lollipops, in fact, did not grow on trees. Over 30 years later, I still hold onto to that memory and now it is a reminder of how much I was loved.

I thought of this memory last week when we were readmitted to the hospital on the oncology floor.  We were so excited to be discharged from the hospital the day before that we accidentally left Aidan's stuffed monkey, Coco, in our room on the 7th floor.  When we realized what had happened I called the hospital and checked with the nurses on the unit we were previously on.  I called and asked if Coco was in the lost and found. Neither called proved successful and Coco was unfortunately lost.

Coco was just an ordinary Toys R Us stuffed animal and we actually had another identical monkey in the house. When you're nine though, it's just not the same.  To his credit, Aidan didn't make a big deal out of losing Coco but you could tell he was pretty sad and disappointed.  When we went back into the hospital we told him we'd keep asking around and hopefully Coco would turn up.

The next time my parents visited we had them pick up another monkey from Toys R Us.  We had initially just planned to present it to Aidan as a replacement to Coco with our sincerest apologies for being neglectful and losing the original Coco.  When the new monkey arrived though I flashed back to that lollipop tree and Jamie and I decided it would be OK to tell him a little lie.

We gave the monkey to his doctors and explained the situation.  Not only were they receptive to participating in our little ruse, but Dr. Courtney made sure that we had removed the tags and even roughed up the new Coco so that he looked like he'd been stuck in the hospital laundry.

The reveal couldn't have went any better.  Seeing the joy on Aidan's face was definitely worth the deception. 

I said in the very first post that I planned on being very emotionally honest and this is going to be one of those times.  

I know that a big reason why Aidan is handling all of this so well is because he trusts us implicitly when we tell him that everything is going to be OK - that despite how awful the chemotherapy will be at times, we just have to get through it because he is going to be fine.  And I hope and wish that we are telling him the truth, but we can't know if we are. We have no guarantees.  The weight of it is almost too much for me and it's why I am so often just on the brink of tears.  I'm okay with lying about lollipop trees, replacement monkeys, Santa Claus, and the tooth fairy, for example. But when I hug him and tell him everything is going to be okay,I can't have that be a lie.