Can I Keep It?

Reunion

 

Me and Ev, October 15, 2010

*This great shot was taken by the talented Hud Andrews!*

Messages

When Evelyn first started on her brief journey with pancreatic cancer last May, my friend Nay Nay in Maryland, contacted me to tell me about the strangest thing that happened to her.  She set her GPS and followed the directions, only to wind up in the parking lot of Johns Hopkins on the other side of town from where she wanted to be.  On the same day that Evelyn started chemo.  She suggested I come up and we could go out on their boat, get pedicures.  Have some fun.  Evie nixed it, saying she had good days and bad.  So I dutifully told Nay about Ev's desire to get through the chemo and do it on the other side.

Several weeks ago, Hud was learning to text.  We were sitting on the couch, sending messages to one another. (Modern life!) All of the sudden, a small robot rabbit, Evelyn had given me for my birthday six years ago while I was in Richmond for a visit, jumped from the bookcase where it has resided all these years.  I picked it up and replaced it.  Fifteen minutes later, it threw itself to the floor again.  No other object (and there are MANY) had moved a silly milimeter.  I looked at Hud.  "Something's wrong with Ev," I said flatly.  I emailed her in the morning with queries of news.  She replied, "No, no news, it must have been a cosmic boom."

*That's her, the robot rabbit, snuggled between the legs of the doll

my Aunt Boo made me when I was born.*

The next day Evie was admitted to Johns Hopkins as an inpatient.  They explained the cancer was advancing at a phenominal rate.  She made the brave decision to stop treatment.  And go home.

Yesterday, I texted our mutual friend, Nancy, to see if she had any news.  I texted Evelyn that I loved her.  I texted Hud about making plans.

At 4:15 in the afternoon, I made mysef a glass of ice water, went to the sink to wash a spoon.  When I turned around, the refrigerator was dark.  No lights, sounds, dead.  I looked at the back of it for some reason.  It had come unplugged.  The cord lay on the floor for no apparent reason.  The refrigerator had not been moved for weeks.  I do not know how it happened.

Hud wasn't feeling well and went to bed at 8:00.  I was in the den, watching some stupid reality TV to make myself sleepy.  At 8:45, the robot bunny starts lighting up and moving its ears.  I tried to shut it off, but by 8:50, it was still talking.  Its cheeks burned bright red.  It said something unintelligible.  Which is odd in and of itself because you used to be able to understand its language.  I tried to shut it off.  Thought I had.  Put it back in the box and placed it on the bookshelf.  8:52: the right cheek lights up.  Then both cheeks.  It chirps.  By 8:54, I was sobbing.  I knew she was gone.  I told her goodbye.  The robot rabbit made a laughing sound.  And then it stopped.  It hasn't moved since. 

At 8:24 that same evening, a mutual friend had emailed to tell me that Evelyn had passed peacefully, surrounded by her family in the afternoon.  I didn't get it until the next day.

*That's the robot rabbit in the middle by the star Ev made me for my high school locker with pictures of her and a letter she wrote me from my scrapbook.*

As a child, I had an imaginary friend named Charlie.  I got my mother in trouble one day when I was two, by telling my father who had asked me about my day, "Charlie was here."  I had the uncanny ability to know when the phone was ringing before it actually made a sound.  Once, I told my mother, "Aren't you goinng to get that?"  She looked quizically at me and said, "But the phone isn't..."  BRRRINNNGGG!  And there is a story about me and a book that made a believer out of my grade school librarian.  But that's for another day.

Sometimes I wonder if Charlie's still out there.  Telling me things I need to know.  About my real friends when they can't tell me.

Evelyn would have been forty-nine in ten days.  I will miss her every day of the rest of my life.

On Going Home

No matter how many years have passed (thirty-two) since I moved away from Richmond,  I have always considered it to be my home.  Despite the fact that I have no dwelling to call my own there, it is the place that holds my heart.  I grew up with some of the nicest people I have ever met in all of my wanderings.  They are the family that resides in my spirit.

I was supposed to spend the day, furiously packing my bags for home.Tying up loose ends.  Making apologies to the dogs.  Instead, I am wandering around in circles like a dog looking for a good spot to lie down.

My oldest and dearest friend --the one who made my teen years fun and exciting --the one who forged gallantly through the wilderness of our youth to adulthood --is leaving for a place that won't allow her to come back.

I thought I could get to her in time, but her husband called me yesterday.  She is slipping away quicker than first thought.  Visitors (and the medications she has to take for pain) make her nervous.  Not wanting to add to her distress, I cancelled my trip.She needs to do this in her own brave way.

Going home will never be the same again.

Mean Girl

I don't know why I was mean to this girl.  I called her ugly.  Agreed with her family that she was stupid.  Didn't find her amusing in the slightest.

 

I threw her at the world, looking for a place for her to stick.  And the world was mean to her as well.  The world broke her arm three times, her foot, her collar bone, all of her fingers and her nose.  It gave her four car accidents, tearing up her face and premanently damaging her drawing arm.  It attracted an abusive man for her to marry when she was young.  It gave her a schizophrenic grandmother who named her, "whore" and beat her every chance she got because of the antics of a soap opera star.  The world bestowed her with an alchoholic grandfather who enabled the grandmother in every way.  Called her names.  Said she was unworthy of any kind of love.

It gave her cancer.

Lately, I've been feeling that the universe dislikes me.  Maybe because of the way I treated her back then.  I've been dealing with random acts of meaness.  A vendor at the TACA show stormed my booth three times, damaging a print and screaming at me.  I don't even know her name or what she does.  The show coordinator apologized.  It was not her fault.  She cannot control the mental stability of her vendors.  But I have to ask, "Why me?"  A commentor on a blog I frequent is consistantly rude to the point of being a bully to me despite the fact that I am saying what several other people are expressing.  I have to ask, "Why me?"  A random stranger in another car gave me the finger and I was not even changing lanes or driving below the speed limit.  And yet again, "Why me?"

When she turned thirty, I started to be kinder to her, but I have never really forgiven myself for what I did to her.   Maybe now is that time. 

For finally loving me.

*This beautiful photograph of my twenty year old self was taken by my dear and talented friend, Vickie Johnson Bradshaw on a trip we took to Panama City.*

Chasing Rabbits

On Tuesday, we got the greatest news!  I got a reprieve from all these cancer screenings.  Six whole months of freedom.  The longest spell yet.

But for some reason, on Wednesday, I tumbled down the rabbit's hole.  My soul carried me to a dark, mouldy warren of sadness, anxiety and pain.  I suffered dreams from my past about the abuse my grandparents shaped me with.  I was tortured by fears of my ex-husband.  I checked every mole for signs of betrayal.

I was profoundly lost.

 

The caul is slowly lifting.  It started yesterday afternoon.  I'm clawing my way back to the open air.

Perhaps when the weight lifted off from all the cancer screenings, I collapsed from sheer exhaustion.  The pappies have been quietly waiting for me, leaning over the edge, wagging their tails and hoping for my return.

Tomorrow is my forty-ninth birthday.  Time to surface.  Hang on kids, I'm almost there.

Gratuitous Simone Shot

At long last I have figured out what it takes to get people to view my blog...

Gratuitous shots of Simone.

I've been lying in bed with the flu since yesterday.  It's given me a lot of time to think.  I awoke from a four hour nap thinking of Sean Swarner's talk.  We were telling funny stories on ourselves.  I told the room about when I awakend after the surgery.  The recovery nurse immediately shoved a mirror in my face.  Groggy and still drugged, I looked at the six inch scar encircling my neck and scoffed, "Great.  All I need now is some green skin dye and a couple of neck bolts."  Hud snickered and chimed in, "There's my girl!"  The nurse was horrified.  Panicked, she tried to issue reassuring comments that the doctor did a wonderful job.  I just looked at her and said, "Of course he did.  I know I'm going to be fine."

The real question is, Why in the heck do they do that?  You know, shove a mirror in your face to expose the damage?

It wasn't the first time that had happened to me.  When I was twenty, I was a passenger in a car that went over a guard rail on an off ramp and onto the highway below.  My face and shoulder went through the windshield.  The right side of my face was torn to shreds.  The doctor patiently reattached my ear and stitched together the quarter size hole in my cheek you could see my teeth through.

In the morning, the first nurse came in and asked me how much morphine I needed.  She couldn't believe that I didn't have a massive headache.  I felt sore, but I was fine, really.  Spare me the addictive medications.  Thanks for thinking of me though.  The next nurse entered the room and shoved a giant mirror in my face.  I snatched down.  She tried to put it back up.  "Stop!" I cried, "What are you doing?"  "Showing you the surgery to your face," she replied, puzzled and raised the mirror again.  "Cut it out, will you?" Again I smacked it away.  "Don't you want to see it?"  I looked at her as if she had three heads.  "I figured out this wasn't my look when my father passed out when he saw me..."  She did the same thing every day for a week until my discharge.

I asked one of the operating room nurses at the talk about the mirror.  She replied that most people want to see.  I said, "Nope!  Not the least bit curious.  I figure it's mine whether I like it or not.  I'll have plenty of time to make peace with it when it looks better."

The doctor had done a great job on my face.  Only a scar on my cheek remained into my thirties. It about the circumfrence of my thumb and half the depth.  Laser surgery has removed any lasting effects of it. 

I fingered the six inch scar on my neck this morning as I looked in the mirror. 

And I am at peace with it.

Lost and Found

Okay.  I found the pictures.  They are saved to the camera, not the camera card.  Ugh.  How in the Sam Hill did that happen?  At least they aren't lost.  I hope to show you my fun weekend after I get a cord to download them. 

Wings Cancer Center had a small meet and greet today for Sean Swarner.  He's a two time cancer survivor who has climbed to the top of the world seven times.  Once he completes going to the North and South Poles, he will have won the climbing Super Bowl.  He'll be the first man to complete all of the great peaks of the Earth.

 

 

When Sean was thirteen, he was given four months to live.  But despite the fears of his doctors, he survived.  His body was sixty pounds overweight.  He was bald.  Sean didn't mind that people stared.  He cared that they didn't understand what he was going through.  His father bought him a green t-shirt emblazoned on the front with the words, "I don't always look like this...".  The back read, "I'm on chemo."  The stares turned to questions of compassion and concern.   That shirt was passed on to another child when he completed his treatments.  It was to be passed forward to the next as a talisman for success.

At last count, the doctors said the shirt had been given to thirty children.  All cancer free.

Several years later, when Sean had turn sixteen, he had a routine cancer screening.  The doctors found a new sarcoma in his lung.  It was an aggressive form.  They gave him fourteen days to live.  Not from the cancer, but from the treatment.  He was put into a medically induced coma.  His entire sixteenth year was spent sleeping.  While his friends were out picking up girls and getting a driver's license, he was perusing dreams. 

And getting better.

After a complete recovery, he put the cancer in his past.  Sean went to college.  Had some fun.  A lot of fun.

Slowly, he realized that he was the person he had become because of his cancer.  He needed a new challenge.  He scaled Everest.  Denali.  Kilamanjaro.  All seven of the highest places in the world. 

Sean quotes, "Humans can survive thirty days without food.  The human condition can exist three days without water, but it cannot exist thirty seconds without hope."

Sean has been cancer free for ninteen years.

He passed out bracelets that read, "Keep climbing".  I'm wearing mine right now.

I remember telling one of friends that I was given the summer off.  I was cancer free for two months.  She said, "See?  You can do anything!  You should climb Everest!"

I told her, "I think I just did."

Funny

...or not.  Yesterday, I received some bad news about a dear friend's mom and skin cancer.  You all know how much I hate those two words used simultaneously.  She's on the mend, but the prognosis is not clear yet.  If you're out there, please send her all the good and happy thoughts you can muster. 

To the woman I grew up with, my beloved friend, the best friend I could ever have hoped for these many years, I wish you strength and peace and love to deal with this struggle. 

Some things are out of our control. 

Stay out of the sun.  Wear sunscreen if you do.  Know your body. 

It will keep you from having to deal with this shit, crap, poop.

Perfectionist

I crawled up the staircase on my hands and knees, scooping up the tufts of Carmen fur nesting in the corners of the steps.  This after sweeping yesterday and vacuuming two days before.  It is a never ending battle with cleanliness.  Schyterbolle, sadly, will not ever find itself in the godliness category.

As I rounded the top, I pondered over perfectionism.  It must be terrible to be greeted by the imperfection of the world every single day.  I wandered past Carmen, sleeping on her bed in front of the fan to toss the fistful of her fur in the trashcan.  She didn't wake when I stroked her fuzzy head. I love that hairy old dog because of all that she is. Her life is perfect.  Picking up a pound of hair a day is worth her company.

I try to view the world as a magical place.  I wonder at the miracles of difference.  I strain to see the quiddity of imperfection.

This tiny bunny is perfection.

It would be a lie to say I am immune to the ways of perfectionism.  This week, I succumbed to my own imperfections.  I have shunned tan skin since the diagnosis of my cancer twenty months ago.  It was my badge of survivorship when someone would poke fun at my pasty white legs.  But every time I gazed at my face in the mirror, I felt ugly.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  I faux-tanned this week.  I bought some Jergens daily tanning lotion and Tan Towels and I changed the color of my skin.

Immediately, the compliments started rolling in. 

You look terrific!  Did you lose weight?

You look beautiful today.

Your skin is fantastic in that color blue.

It was the same for me when I first turned gray and colored my hair.  Even my own mother, who was horrified by the thought that I had become a red head finally saw me, she said, "You know, I guess God does make the occasional mistake."

I rather liked my graying hair at the tender age of thirty-two.  Other people didn't see it my way. 

Are you okay?  Do you need to sit down?

Wow.  You're thirty-two?

You look tired.  You're not coming down with something are you?

When my favorite clerk in the check out line at the grocery store said she was afraid I was about to fall out, I caved and made an appointment at the salon.  

I have tried valiantly to embrace my imperfections, love all parts of myself, even when others don't.  But this week, I have decided that I am an artist.  My job is to paint.  Now I'm just doing it on my body. 

We'll call it a performance piece on the manipulation of perfection.

*The cute little guy yawning is from zooborns.

Bless-ed

When I was very young, I sat on the back porch at my grandmother's house in Mississippi, sobbing over my recently deceased kitten.  I railed against God.  My great-grandmother asked if I had prayed for it's tiny soul.  "Yeth!" I cried with a lisp, "And God didn't answer my prayers!"  My great-grandmother gathered up my tear soaked face in her calloused palms and sighed, "Yes, He does, Angel...  No is an answer."

 

I've never forgotten that moment.  I was three. 

I have said many prayers over the last year and a half.  Today I got one answered with a "yes".  My breast surgeon gave me a clean bill of health.  My mammogram was unremarkable.  I don't have to go back for another whole year.

One more milestone.  One more release.  One more sigh of relief. 

One more prayer answered.