WORK.

At one point during these last seven months, someone mentioned the phrase “toxic positivity,” and we hope we haven’t given the impression that we’re living entirely on rainbows and positive vibes. (These are vital snacks, but the heavy nutrition of our days are made of less sweet stuff.)

Pull up a chair for a minute and we’ll have a brief talk about the un-glamorous world of work.

Nether of the Mosers cruised into college directly from high school or exited universities to find cozy chairs waiting for them. We were grease monkeys, gophers, day labors, janitors and desk clerks. These jobs – that continued well after graduate degrees – instilled in us an understanding of work as sometimes unpleasant and undignified labor that still needed to be done, and they provided important educations, too.

Even after having moved into professional jobs, we knew that someone had to make the donuts and never felt above digging into the work (often literally, as the husband has dug a fair number of ditches). So we jumped at school lunches and bus routes when at Foster’s Daily Democrat, understanding that avoiding work is itself work.

But nothing really prepares you for the type of work Julie has put into battling her leukemia.

Recovering from chemo is grueling and each round has left Julie weaker. Going in for weekly transfusions and having clumsy nurses miss an artificial port installed into your chest isn’t a vacation, but the symptoms of cancer treatment go beyond the avoidable or careless (some of the worst things are part of the plan, after all).

Preparing to leave your home (and your treasured dog, not to mention what’s his name) for inpatient care drains you in a way that mirrors a body drained of its blood.

Sorting through a small, dark city of pills every week or swallowing more than twenty through cracked lips and a mouth that has lost its ability to produce saliva? It’s not fun. Having to repeat this process four times each day? It’s less fun than that.   

Forcing yourself up when every cell in your body wants to sleep or your eyelids twitch and your hands tremble because of medications..?

Getting up, going out for a daily walk through our tiny neighborhood while pushing a cart with a seat that you know you will need?

Searching for words that were once as familiar as your own left hand or forging through fog to try to locate an obscure reason for why you got up?

Not fun at all.

On the other hand, pulling bandages off your loved one and smelling the gauze for infection?

Inhabiting a mind that lights up at every conceivable and inconceivable form of danger?

Watching helplessly as your world is poisoned?

Holding hands that tremble and kissing a mouth that once was as wet as the Amazon, but now has become a desert?

No, none of this is fun (well, kissing is fun), but this time has been edifying. We’re not always the people we hoped we would be in a moment as difficult as this one has been, but love can guide us. It can straighten all boats and point us to true north.

But it’s still work to get there.  

Work as we knew it – either when we were abused younger people or professionals trying to make the world a little less shitty – has changed, possibly forever. But work as pure brutal labor, literally as important as forcing oneself to eat, drink and laugh? That’s here.

In our professional capacities (and we only mentioned this because people have asked), we are attempting to roll with punches.

Julie was terminated from a job that she loved as she transitioned from short-term to long-term disability. This was bureaucratic and unavoidable (written into sacred policy documents) and we don’t know if there will be a position waiting for her once she is through this process. She still loves her Granite State College Family, and still is an artist educator, dedicated to helping people find a rung up.

Immediately following Julie’s intake for induction (the second most-difficult round of chemotherapy she’s had, following this most recent one), the kind people of Granite State College reached out to Jules, supported her, sent music and poetry and so much other cool shit. The HR department there also steadied Randy’s boat, as he sat alone in their home, and absorbed a lot of confusion and pain.

We will never have a bad word to say about Granite State College. A year is a long time to step out of a role and the university system is undergoing its own massive transformation, and as Julie wrote in her doctoral dissertation: The future is unwritten.  

A good friend (Cheryle Pacapelli) connected Randy to Harbor Care, where he consulted throughout the spring and summer. Leadership at this non-profit provided a safe space during this time (sharing knowledge and wisdom as well as being flexible and understanding), and we will always be grateful.

(When leadership is this kind, it sends a good message to everyone below them on the org chart, sure, but if you’re at an agency that wouldn’t behave this way, you’re working for the wrong people. Or, maybe, better people are in leadership positions.)

On August 2nd, Randy begins at Harbor Care as its director of marketing. The work is still largely remote (and he can care for Julie during the days, should she need it) and the agency is bringing him in at 32 hours a week, so that the Moser Twins can make weekly meetings at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hilton.

People are very generous and understanding, and we will always be grateful to Harbor Care.   

The timing of this kismet couldn’t be better since Julie would lose her insurance (if we didn’t carry the full load, which is a significant amount) after this month, but Randy’s will begin in September. Now we just need to comprehend the inscrutable calculus of high decidable vs. low co-pays and decide how long we need to carry Julie’s insurance before we’re convinced we won’t lose access to her outstanding care team at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

It’s just work is all.  

An aside: People sometimes claim Randy writes too long – this post is roughly a quarter of the size of many of his e-mails. His friend Rob the bear is fond of quoting Twain as maybe saying, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Unfortunately, Randy is a creature of excess and everything comes back words – but the author would just like to point out another wonderful thing about work: We know many of you primarily because we’ve worked together.

The slush pile that is this writer still can’t look at the GoFundMe campaign without getting emotional, but this was particularly the case when he saw “Friends at C&C” on that list. (God, I miss you folks! Oops, I mean he misses you folks!) Friends from Foster’s, The Health Adventure, IOD, and Telco routinely provide emotional or spiritual support. Julie has talked with former mentors from virtually all of her former roles, and that’s meant so much to her.

Granite State College co-workers continue to share cool shit and the peeps I’ve met in New Hampshire in the SUD field… I love you guys, too! (Or, you know, he loves you guys, too!) Pandas who roam the badlands of DHHS have been very helpful ninjas, indeed.

Thank you so much. We will get y’all thank-you letters (so many people have been kind to us), but the most important things are sometimes the hardest to say. If we had all the time in the world, we probably could still not discover a word simple enough to express our gratitude for getting to share this Earth with you.

Thank you.

Quick health update: The Mosers are making weekly visits to Dartmouth-Hitchcock for tests and transfusions, and Jules was fairly low during last week’s trip. This is part of the ride and not at all unexpected, but so far this has been a very difficult nadir and we’re already getting ready for the next phase.

In the next few weeks, there will be a little tug-of-war in Julie’s body when donor cells and what remain of her own blood factory (and her present and future organs, which we’re rather fond of) get to know each other. Next week, the oncologist will be testing for chimerism, that inevitable process in this treatment when two people become one.