Yesterday I ran to an old friend from my old church at the grocery store. She asked me where I was going for Thanksgiving dinner. I told her I would be going to my mother-in-law's house. We traditionally go there but this year it makes it especially easy for me and Mr D (when we have turkey at home Mr D usually cooks it). I said that I would be making last night's dinner though. I told her that my last chemo would be Christmas week and went on to tell her more about my breast cancer battle. She was honest with me and told me that I looked like I was in chemo and she had tears in her eyes. I don't know if they were for me or not. I told her that my oncologist held a lot of hope for my beating this thing. I hope that if her tears were for me that it comforted her.
I'm beyond tears. I know that I will live or I will die. Early this fall a member of that old church my friend and I attended died after losing her battle with cancer that came back. I see ten-year survivors and then I see J. Maybe I reminded L. about J. Maybe that is why L. was crying. I know my own battle with cancer transports me back to the deaths of my mother and father. Mom got sick in November 35 years ago and died 2 months later of pancreatic cancer. Dad lived 25 years longer and died at age 89 on a November day. The sky darkens, the leaves fall, and this November I am surrounded by nurses, doctors, and phlebotomists. I feel my lack of health and remember my mother and father surrounded by the same type of people. True, their prognoses were much different from mine. I have hope, right? Still, somehow my suffering brings me in communion with theirs. I have to remind myself that they are not suffering now, that they live with God now, but it doesn't negate the memories. The death is not the hard part, it's the dying.
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