Today marks the beginning of our ending. It was 4 years ago, today, that cancer first entered our lives. It was like a bomb went off and our lives were ground zero. I can remember it like it just happened. The panic in Chuck's voice on the phone urging me to come home. My insistence on him telling me what was wrong. And the desperate responsibility I gave my sister to stay on the phone with me and keep me focused until I arrived safely home to excavate through the rumble. Cancer? How can that be? Did he really say - the doctor thinks I have cancer?
Cancer - one of the few words that turns the blood in your veins ice cold. Instantly your life has been hijacked and a foreign plan is playing out. A moment in time your life doesn't recover from. I don't know yet what I'll need to get through today as I'm assaulted with memories. Maybe a long drive, maybe a massage, maybe a walk in the woods, maybe ... it'll come to me from deep inside and I just have to trust where it leads me.
I've been working on this post for a few days now. Today - instead of relaying the horrors of our cancer journey, I want to share the blessings. BIG CAVEAT - the blessings and lessons I've learned can't be measured against the massive devastation and loss we've all experienced through Chuck's illness & death. I'd give all that I have to be able to rewrite our story. This is not network tv where the beloved character can come back from the dead to boost ratings. I can only choose how to tell the story and how to carry that into the future. Even in the most desperate of circumstances, love and grace can be found. This is what I want to share of our story for in these details are some of the most precious moments of our lives.
In no particular order, some blessings through our journey with cancer:
1. Cancer cuts away the bullshit. And shines a spot light on what truly matters.
2. Maddening while it is all happening, it's a blessing that you receive the bad news in bites & pieces as you are ready to handle them. The mind is a phenomenal adaptor. Your hope constantly redefines as each new series of tests & treatments are evaluated. Hope remains. And your ability to shift is extraordinary.
3. Your sense of humor is a godsend.
4. Kindness & loving grace of strangers. Chuck would have strangers stopping him on the street asking how he was doing. Sharing their own tales of chemo and treatments. You are given the secret hand-shake to a world you'd never choose to know, but here is were the best in humanity is witnessed. Compassion, love, care, generosity, kindness, sorrow, empathy, understanding - grace.
5. Friendship & Family. Here is where the rubber meets the road. Some relationships grow stronger, some fade away, some step up to the plate in such unexpectedly loving ways. And amazing people come into your life that you'd never know otherwise. I can't tell you how often we were brought to grateful tears by heads being shaved, care packages being knit, walks, phone calls, donations, meals etc. It's truly a humbling experience. So often Chuck would look at me with big tears in his eyes saying "I'm so loved."
6. Mend those fences well. One of the blessings in Chuck's remission time was he got to re-establish a relationship with his father. Neither of them has to move on from this life with that being unresolved.
7. You never know how strong you truly are until you are tested. I'm proud to say we both handled ourselves with an abundance of grace and strength.
8. The preciousness of life. And to make the seconds, minutes, days count.
9. The 2nd time around, I believe our acceptance and courage in facing the prognosis gave us permission to have many talks about both of fears & hopes for the future. Chuck told me in his own words what he wishes for me as I continue on. And I was able to reassure him through my own faith that he'd be surround by love when his time came. I firmly believe it was this acceptance that allowed him to pass on before anyone ever expected. He was staring at a future of loss of control, potential paralysis, loss of mental capacities, more treatments, hospice, all of which he was spared.
10. The lesson that there are worse things in this life than death. It no longer frightens me to die. That doesn't mean I'm putting the welcome mat out for the grim reaper any time soon.
11. Through my own journey in care-taking & grief, my spiritual connection has opened up.
12. Holding a hand can be a lifeline.
13. The value of your life force & energy.
14. The gift of time. Chuck was able to carry out the main goals he wanted to achieve in remission. Take me to Paris, see Versailles, complete the LiveStrong 40 mile bike ride, get us (me) into own home, have his mother settled in CA ... and countless others. He made his short list and accomplished a lot.
15. How the heart broken open by tragedy heals with more capacity to love.
16. The extraordinary grace, empathy, compassion & passion of the doctors, nurses, therapists and care staff in the cancer institutes & hospitals. They are angels walking among us.
17. Never in my life had I felt so strongly that I was exactly where I was born to be, then when I was taking care of Chuck.
And although there are countless more blessing received, I'm running out of steam... so, I will leave you with this last one.
18. You can't take care of anyone else unless you care for yourself. And critical illness can take your marriage to depths of love unimaginable any other way. In his last days, Chuck would tell me that I was his knight in shining armor. That all the ways to love, protect & provide for a person, I fulfilled for him. What an amazing gift to receive. And what a truth to know about yourself. You were strong & present enough to provide the love and care your soul mate needed when it mattered the most.
I'm not done with my dance with cancer. Unfortunately, cancer will shape our lives in profound and extraordinary ways as millions of people will battle cancer in their lifetimes. The landscape of my life has been ravaged by cancer and the life I was leading is gone. I'm a survivor of cancer as much as if the battle was waged in my own flesh. Someday, I'll find a way that I can utilize my experience to help others on this journey on a more intimate level. The right path has yet to be discovered. And I'll continue supporting LiveStrong and other organizations in their battles against cancer as I can. I'm in this fight for life.
So, live strong my friends.
Live Strong.
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