My Wife's Reality...TV Show Problem.

                  Last night Karen and I were laying in bed. We have an agreement that I think we are both very happy with. During football season, if there is a game on that I want to watch, I get the remote. The rest of the year, the remote is hers. Her taste in television is mostly "reality".  While the remote is hers, she does allow me to offer up preferences for which shows out of her selected recordings and which shows I would prefer not to watch. If you must know, the shows I cannot watch are: Project Runway, So You Can Dance, and the show about Dance Moms. The rest, mostly aren't as bad as I thought they would be when I just knew them by title alone.
                 Before Karen, I rarely ever watched reality tv. She has recently started watching a new show called, "Newlyweds: The First Year". Last night she wanted to binge watch a few episodes of this show. The show follows like 4 or 5 couples and shows the highs and lows the couples experience during their first year of marriage. I don't like the show. While most of what these couples are arguing about are common fights that most couples experience, I don't feel like the personalities of most of these folks are like Karen and me. Not saying we are better or worse...just saying we are different and handle things differently than most of them do, most of the time. Where is this going...
                  Last night Karen and I got home late (9ish) from our friends house. It was about an hour after we normally put Harper down to bed. We enter the house, quickly move to Harper's room, and begin to dress her for sleep. We take off her party clothes and she's down to a diaper that needs changing. I'm kissing her face as Karen continues the changing process. I pull back and am just looking at the baby squirming on the changing table and Karen says, "She's got my veins." I look at Harper's belly, and I see some blue veins just beneath the surface of her skin. I start to think about the veins and how I want to hold and protect every vein in her little body.- I think about the movie "John Q" where the father is holding a hospital under the threat of his gun because he wants them to take one of the organs in his body vital to his survival and place it in his son's body to save his son's life-
                  I can't say I connected or appreciated that movie then in the same capacity that I do when I recall it now that I am a father. As I stare at her little body all I think about is how much I've learned can go wrong with the human body since being diagnosed. I have to immediately change my thinking. I do, but I  my leap from that train of thought to the next isn't very far. I'm back to just thinking about how much I love this little baby and how much I hate cancer and the thoughts that come with it. Part of what is so frustrating is that death by cancer is just so pointless. I think we all want something to come or grow from the lives we lead on this Earth and even further, in an ideal world, our deaths would even have some benefit to those left behind. Unfortunately, cancer rarely leaves those it strikes with that opportunity. There's no John Q moment that allows you to demonstrate just how much you love your family as much as you do. So you have the present. You have the time God has given you to communicate/demonstrate just how much you love them.
                As Karen and I made our way to bed, we lay down and I look over and see the veins in her forearm and think about how they are as visible (as she said) as Harper's are on her little belly. My girls have the same transparent skin. She turns on "Newlyweds: The First Year" and a woman begins talking about how her husband forgave her for backing out of a flight because she was afraid to fly. She continued on by saying that if he can forgive her for that they can get through anything. I turn and feel the 18 inch scar under my right arm, and the scar on my head that runs from ear to ear. I think about the last two years and the punishment that my body has been through and about how much emotional pain Karen has endured during that time. Not just the worry of becoming a single mother, living life on her own, but the pain that comes along with loving your spouse and watching them go through the stages that cancer can put you through. Then I think about how Harper hasn't had the father she deserves (that I want to be) over that period of time.  I then decide that the veins i've looked at this evening make it impossible for me to maintain interest or devote time (of which i'm not sure how much I have left) to a show where couples would understand if the other wants to end the marriage over the fear of flying. I ask Karen to change what we are watching. She does, without complaint or argument. I then grab hold of her veiny hand and fall asleep hoping that asking her to change the show is something we can overcome.

"Hold on to the thread, the currents will shift"-Eddie Vedder

With love,

Brian