Cancer continues to ebb the flow of life......
Every day I come home from some task or work to go onto my computer and look for news from my family. I relish my children's foraging in the e-world to blog their likes, dislikes,opinions, chaotic lives, or simply the annoyances plaguing them.
My personal e-mails, however, never fail to contain an update of who has cancer, or how someone I know is doing in their new therapies after a renewed bout with the ever pressing growth of tumors. I suppose they think I wish to know how their loved one is doing. I am saddened by these news as they only keep me re-living the last days of my own dear wife. The pathways in which someone gets better during a treatment, then falls back as the cancer learns how to renew itself in spite of the chemicals. I cannot tell them how these news affect me. I don't want to seem uncaring. Nor do I want to continue dwelling on my own loss. The pain is a hard one. I do nothing and nothing gets better. Maybe just talking about it will help. Somewhere in the world is a family that has never experienced cancer in their lives. I try to imagine what that is like. I cannot........yet......
Comments
For such a long time I clung to the hope that Mama would beat the odds. She did for so long. It was June 12th - her last surgery- when I realized she was really truly dying. You probably remember. That sudden feeling that washes over you as the doctor expresses that they hadn't been able to get all the cancer. It's like the wind is knocked out of you. The room spinns a little and though you know people are talking, none of it processing. There is nothing else that matters. I had hope to hold onto before that surgery, thopugh I knew it wasn't likely. Somehow Ma had been a superhero. I did not see her in the toughest months of her chemo and radiation. Just towards the end. I can't imagine what the burden must have been like witness Ma's pain and struggle every day. You were a superhero, too. As you said recently, "I am what I have to be."
Posted by: Rachael | October 27, 2008 6:22 PM
I'm sorry Papa. Your words are beautiful to me- filled with patience, determination, and the sort of practicality that reminds me of Maman. I hate the difficulty of your journey, but am soothed by the wisdom that I read in your words. It's good to hear from you.
Posted by: Kristen | October 27, 2008 11:59 PM
I, too, experience those emails differently now. With a fore-knowledge of what is to come that would be simply inappropriate to share. And sometimes, I think, "yeah, well, it happens." Which sounds uncaring, but I think it's just me not having the energy to empathize yet. As you said, not yet.
Posted by: Mara | October 28, 2008 11:25 AM
When Mama was diagnosed with cancer, it was never if she would heal, rather how long would we now have together. We changed the way we dialogged and conversed. We changed our greetings each morn and evening. We changed how we treated everyone we knew. We became more open in our deep and abiding love for each other. We changed....Cancer changes us. Maman would say"you are in charge of your own happiness." We chose to be happy somehow through this. I chose to be happy with her. Though I know she knew I was angry for her, and angry about her cancer. It was so very hard to watch her diminish in her health over the years. She will always be the most heroic figure in my lifetime. The emotion has overwhelmed me so that I no longer can neither bear the burden of this anger, nor the huge emotional swings that go with such loss. The only person who ever understood me, or loved me so wonderfully, is gone....I truly, deeply,completely, miss her.
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