Looking for the Grace along the way

One more day until October 1st.  24 hours.  EXHALE.  I’m not going to lie.  I’ve had a really hard time with Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.   Seriously. You think YOU’RE tired of seeing sick kids, sad statistics, death, fear and horror everyday in your news feed?  Yeah, well so are most of us mommas who live with it every day.   We can’t freakin WAIT for it to be over.  Hell, I want to hide my OWN news feed….September will end and most people will go back to posting pictures of apple pies and kittens and funny jokes…..but for parents like us will anything really change?  No, not really.  But I can dream.

Dream of a time when it really will be different.  I mean the whole cancer thing – over – gone – treatment done!  Its not that things are really bad per se right now….I mean Noah is doing amazingly well.   His counts are good, his test results look stellar, his blood work clean….he is thriving!   Its just that I so terribly terribly miss our pre-cancer lives sometimes I feel I might die from it.   I find myself wanting to run through the months…..push on to winter, quick…now spring…and summer again…so fast fast fast to a time when we can be cancer and chemo free.   Now that we have a head start if we just keeping running and don’t look back, relapse won’t be able to find us, right?…..Or maybe I just need distance and some time….to be alone to grieve a bit…to be able to turn off the phone, the computer, close my eyes, take a nap…..and know someone isn’t going to die while I’m sleeping.   I want to set my Facebook profile to friends only and post pictures of kittens, fall leaves, pumpkins and smiling babies……Fuck cancer.

If I’m honest more than anything else I find I’m angry……I’m angry at pretty much everything.  You, him, the UPS guy, the person that tells me to take it easy, the person that tells me to suck it up, the person that tells me to get a hobby, the person that tells me I have to move on and not let this define me, the person that tells me to get help and well yeah, the barber, the baker, the candlestick maker…. oh and God….mostly God.  You see I thought we had this great thing going…this fantastic relationship…..but then Noah got cancer and the shit hit the fan…and its kind of a trust issue now I suppose.  Once your child has cancer, you can never really go back to thinking that if you just have faith everything will work out in the end.  That everything happens for a reason. Because honestly…it doesn’t always…..and we know that now.  And I can’t find my way back.

Sometimes kids suffer and die.  And its horrible. And I could have lived my entire life without ever bearing witness to that kind of suffering…..I mean honestly I know that cancer is not the end all be all of horrible things that can happen to someone – but that awareness doesn’t make me less bitter.  Sometimes kids choke on pebbles, or get hit by cars, or are born too early, or get other horrible diseases that steal their lives…..and I am mindful that I wouldn’t want to trade places with other mommas or their horribles for all the tea in china…..but somehow that doesn’t make it any easier.  It doesn’t make this place any less dark.  It should. God help me, I know it should.  But it doesn’t.   Please don’t misunderstand, I am grateful. I am so so so grateful that my child is alive…..and if the price for that is this…… I’ll willingly pay it a thousand times over.   But I just wish I didn’t feel so broken…..so irredeemably broken.

So I am looking forward to October, to the leaves and wind and even the snow…..to the quiet and dark and rest…to healing and redemption and renewal.  Pray for me.  Pray for all of us mommas….pray that we don’t lose ourselves, our families, our perspective…..that we can look for the light on this journey even in the darkest places…..that we can make our peace with God….that we can find the Grace laid out for us along the way.

 

Cancerland

Dear Mary,

I know I need to make it down this spring to clean out the shed, but I don’t think I will. I’m so behind on the things I need to do….not to mention the things I should do…..seems like I can only make time for the things I want to do….which these days are becoming fewer. I want my life back.

We’ve spent 42 days in the hospital since March 11. You’d think I’d be more motivated to get stuff done before we have to go back. But I’m not. Its like I have this built-in petulant hostility directed at anything necessary that doesn’t involve keeping someone alive.   I’m trying though honestly…I doggedly started a TO-DO list this very morning, had a panic attack, and promptly went back to bed.

The nurse comes this morning for more blood work for Noah…..hopefully his counts will be up enough to start back on chemo tomorrow. What a strange thing to hope for….being well enough to be poisoned safely.   Three out of four of the boys off to school and here I sit, cup of coffee and my laptop in bed…watching the rain wash the muck from my camper.

I love that camper.  When Noah is better, I want to pack them all into it and drive all the way across the country…..yellowstone, the grand cannon, area 57, the worlds largest ball of twine……..Secretly, some days, I dream of packing them all up anyway and running off to a beach in Mexico.  Sand, and surf, and pineapples…..and no sick, no pills, no crying in the night, no needles,  no suffering.

Sometimes I seriously think we could outrun it. What kind of crazy is that? Cancer couldn’t find us all the way in Mexico right?   We could change our names from Jones to Smith….and no one would ever know……..But I know  eventually “they’d” come for us, with their white coats, and kind eyes and name badges, and beeping poles of poison… and they’d drag us back to Cancerland.   And we would have to go back ten spaces and miss a turn for being such lousy players. Thats when I remember that lousy players tend to lose….and we can’t.

I hear the nurse downstairs….but Tris is down there. I know I have to get up eventually and at least turn in the camp paperwork for Ethan….today is the last day.  But I have until four this afternoon, so I think I’ll sit and watch the rain here a while longer….

Give my love to the boys,  Cathy