Tears and Fears

I shouldn't have done it.  I really do not want to know what may lie ahead for treatment with cancer.  Google can make it far too easy to look towards possible treatments.  How many people in my position would be thinking....HOORAY, cancer treatment for possibly a year, or the rest of my life, treatment that can make me deathly ill, and possibly kill me? I like to think that most people are rational enough to understand that is NOT a pleasant prospect.

I like to be positive.  There are so many wonderful things about this life.  Right now I'm listening to the best sound in the world to me, our two beautiful girls in the kitchen creating a meal for our family.  They joke, laugh, sing, dance, and create food that is very nourishing.  I hear their father in their voices, their laughter, and he lives on.

I prefer to be positive for it is pretty certain that I will only live this life once.  I would prefer to live once and done, and then move into an eternal forum without the many difficult challenges of this part of our forever existence.  If I can live this life once, it impels me to look beyond the dark dreadful of drama and trauma.

There is a bittersweet quality to cancer, to chronic illness, to disability, and even death.  The bitter is very obvious.  The sweet is more of a surprise.  In the middle of hard, love seems to gain a shimmering brilliance.  Caring comes in most unexpected ways.

While my husband lay in a hospital bed dying our neighbor called and asked if she could do anything.  She was a busy mom with a darling toddler, and a loving husband.  I told her that we were fine. An hour later she was with us in  hospital room with hot cocoa and cookies.  She explained that she was going to be cleaning my kitchen.  When her father had died, their neighbor had cleaned her mother's kitchen.  It was a simple act.  Yet great love passed from friend to friend.

 It is very easy to give in to fear for the future right now.  I mean, I'm staring cancer straight in the face to see which of us will blink first.  My dear Papa taught me that courage is NOT the absence of fear.  True courage means facing the hardest things.  He taught me through his excellent example.  He battled with cancer for five years.  He fought very hard, for life was truly precious to him.  Thanks Papa for teaching me how to continue living in the face of hard!

I will continue to do my very best to be positive.  Sometimes I may have to squeeze and shake the sweet out of that bitter.  If you see me somewhere shaking and squeezing...well you'll know what I'm doing.