So many others

Jay Monahan, Cherie Geiser, Tony Snow, Leroy Sievers...
Just a few of the people that our greatest hopes and worst fears were pinned on when we got the news Jim had Stage IV colon cancer. Jay died very quickly after diagnosis, like Jim. Cherie fought for more than 10 years, Tony beat it briefly only to have it come back again stronger than ever and take him quickly. Leroy was given 3 months to live. He's now on year 2, but it's been a long hard battle and is now wondering if it's time for hospice.

I see cancer everywhere. My uncle, a good friend, a neighbor's sister, a church friend's toddler niece, my boss' best friend, a coworker's wife. More and more every day. So many lives upended. Even when the outcome is "no evidence of disease," it's such a difficult road to travel for the patient and their families. The treatments are horrendous for the patient. Everyone ages in the process from the stress and worry, then you never stop looking over your shoulder for it to rear its ugly head again and start the battle anew.

When I hear of another person with cancer, it makes me relive the treatment year with Jim. It makes me so sad that someone else and their family have to live through that. It's a crazy roller coaster you can't get off of, no matter how sick you are. You're scared all the time. Leroy writes a blog for NPR called My Cancer. In one of his posts he talked about how he would just like a break - not a big one, just some time within a day without the pain and sickness. I'm so grateful for Jim's 400 cancer-free minutes during his dive trip in Mexico with Kate's dad. After that, he never got another break.

I bought myself a baseball cap from an organization called Choose Hope. They donate profits to cancer centers around the US, two Jim went to and one was another option they considered. It says in big letters across the front "CANCER SUCKS." I wear it a lot. I can see it makes people whose lives have never been touched by cancer uncomfortable and scared. In 1971, President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act and declared a war on cancer. Today, 37 years later, we're still scared to death of cancer. That's just not right.

Wearing my cap, I know right away the people who've been to battle - they smile and sometimes say "great hat." One gentleman at the races stopped me and said "My wife's an oncology nurse and she sees a lot of those caps." Oncology nurses...angels sent to earth to help cancer patients.

I took my cap to an embroidery shop on Thursday. They are going to put "Remembering Jim - 5/28/69 to 9/17/07" in an arch across the back opening. I'll be wearing the cap a lot and hoping I'll live to see the day when others won't have to.

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck

I borrowed this book from Mom's bookshelf one Sunday when I was over for dinner. I'm enjoying it a lot. Martha Beck's a very clever and humorous writer - similar to my sister-in-law Kate, and Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. Last night there was a paragraph I must've read six times over because it made me go "Yep!" I thought I'd share it on today's blog post because it resonated with me. NOTE: ALL LEGAL TYPE CREDITS go to the book's author Martha Beck. :-)

“I once saw a television special about a woman who was saved from falling off a cliff by some supernatural force, which she thought probably consisted of one or more angels. The woman and her fiancé had climbed a steep hillside to watch the sun set over the ocean. As twilight fell, they decided to take a shortcut back to sea level—an extremely short cut, as it turned out. The path they chose went almost straight down, and the rock face proved to be soft and crumbly. By dark, the couple was in serious trouble. The tide was coming in, and they were literally clinging to the fragile cliff by their fingernails. Then, just as the woman’s strength gave out, she felt a strong, warm power lift her up, propping her against the rock. Aided by this mysterious force, she gradually made the climb to the beach, arriving safe and sound about fifteen minutes later.

In the meantime, her fiancé fell off the cliff and died.

After some of the things that happened to me while I was expecting Adam, I have no trouble believing this woman’s story. I am quite ready to accept that Something helped her down that cliff, probably the same Something that got me through the smoke of the high-rise fire in Cambridge. But whatever the Something was, I can’t fathom its motivation. As I watched the television special, I kept imagining what the woman’s fiancé must have thought as he plummeted past his beloved, perhaps even seeing as he went by, the angels who were gently transporting her to solid ground. If I had been in his position, I know what I would have thought. I would have thought ‘So what am I, bat guano?' It would have been the last thing to go through my head, if you don’t count the rocks at the bottom of that cliff. Perhaps the angels had a chance to explain their reasons to the deceased fiancé later, but I, for one, don’t understand.

I get the same feeling when I look back on all the mysterious assistance I received during Adam’s gestation. I don’t know if others from my apartment building had invisible helpers hauling them out of the smoke the day Food Shak burned. I doubt it. No one ever mentioned it. Perhaps, you may say, I was the only one who really needed paranormal assistance—but that logic doesn’t work for me either. How many times a day does some poor hapless human really need a good supernatural protector and fail to get one? People are tortured and killed and raped and pillaged on a daily basis, and if there are angels in the vicinity, they apparently just sit around watching—wringing their ectoplasmic little hands, probably letting nature take its course.

A great deal of human energy, including mine, has been spent trying to figure out why some people get help from angels and some get lobotomized by flying debris from freak wheat-threshing accidents. Religious people always seem to have simple formulas to explain this. If you’re very, very good, says the formulas, you can avoid the gods’ disfavor and court their assistance. If you sacrifice a goat, you will be blessed. If it’s the wrong goat—say, one with a gimpy foot—you will be smitten with a pox. If you join the right church, you will live long and prosper; if you leave it, you are consigned to eternal misery. Believe me, you don’t grow up in Utah without hearing a great deal of this sort of reasoning. But none of the causal connections I have heard preached by any religion fits the facts as I see them. All I can say for sure is whatever supernatural beings are operating around us, they are working from a priority list that is very different from mine.

Strangely enough, I have learned to trust them anyway.”

So that's the thought for today. Reflect and do with it what you like.

I love being an aunt

What a hoot my little guy of a nephew is!