until the new life of carcinomas and frozen sections and axillary dissections and adjuvant therapy and carved out nodes and the horrific meandering of cat scratch stitches where once a breast had been , where once his handhold into comfortable sex and comfortable sleep had been , until all these new things grew and pushed and stretched against the fabric of the old life , until the fit of the new with the old was so wrong , so improper , that the old life ripped with the shriek of a tearing sail and the new life , a life of doubt and fear and anger , a life of misfitness , of not knowing where a sentence was going nor where to hold his wife , nor where to focus his eyes when the future insinuated itself into the conversation , burst through the jagged hole .