www.cancermonster.net

I talked to another of my heroes this morning, my sister Anita.  Anita and I are 14 years and 3,000 miles apart.  Yet closer than two hairs on your head.  She is there for me to cry to or laugh with.  And when I need my rear kicked she handles that too. Although now only emotionally! When I was a kid, she used to chase me with a wooden spoon! This morning she just listened when I needed to vent.  This waiting is getting to me.

Then I watched a musical slide show online that my other dear sister made.  I cried.  There are some pictures that I had forgotten.  Memories that slipped away from me for a spell.  Thank you Pammy for pulling them all back in place! Pam is the keeper of good memories in our family.  She has the ability to remember only the good stuff and put away all the hard times.  I wonder how she does that.  I love you Pam.

I have a little sister who beat us all to heaven.  I talk to Jeannie all the time. It has been 18 years.  I was 22 when she died in a car accident.  Kelli was 5 weeks old.  Talk about a Postpartum Crisis.   She was 16.

I also have two brothers. Joseph Michael and Michael Joseph. (The first boy’s name was so good they decided to just switch it around for the next one.) I talked with Mike last night.  He is a tough guy with a gentle soul.  We didn’t become friends until we were both adults.  Now we have a nice relationship. He still lives on the island in south Florida where we grew up.

Joe and I were very close for many years.  He was nice enough to marry the woman who would become the best friend I would ever have.  Joe and Brenda and Dan and I hung out together.  We were in Amway and traveled a lot.  Brenda died eight years ago.  Six weeks after she was diagnosed with cancer. She was 36 and had two boys, one 8yrs old and an 18 month old baby, at the time.  Her death was devastating.  Afterwards it became hard for Joe and I to be together.  We stood as a reminder to each other of what we lost.  Joe has since remarried.  Lisa is a wonderful woman.  We have known her just about all our lives.  She was there when Brenda’s children we’re born and she loves the boys as she does her other three.  She is raising five children and my brother (haha) and my hat goes off to her.  She is another one of my heroes and she doesn’t know it.  She stepped in and took over some pretty big shoes.  I know that my nephews are cared for and loved deeply.  Thank you Lisa.  I don’t think I have ever told you that.

I just talked to Joe on the phone.  I hadn’t called him yet. And he hadn’t called me.  There was a reason for that that no one but the two of is could understand.  My calling him meant that I have to face the fact that I could die.  Because she did.  Him calling me meant that he had to face the fact that she died. Because I could.  Meanwhile neither of us called the other.  The blame lies equally between us.  I knew this.  So I cowboy-ed up and made the first call.

“I am sorry that I didn’t call but I am thinking about you everyday”

“I get it Joe, I am the only one who does. But it’s different this time.  We found it early. I am not going to die.”

With that the whole thing is out and now the line is once again open.  This one thing is just between just him and me.

My Dad passed away a while ago.  He was a hard son-of-a-gun, my dad.  He wasn’t a great husband nor father, but I miss him.  He had Lymphoma. He died from heart failure as a complication of the chemo.  He was 63.

My mother splits her time between Indiana and Florida like most eastern retirees.  Although she did it backwards.  She lived in Florida for almost 30 years before buying her summer home up north.  I guess that makes her a “Sun-bird” instead of a “Snow-bird.”  She remarried a few years ago to a nice, calm, gentle, man. Grandpa Wally is the polar opposite of my father.   Go figure.  Mom had breast cancer and has just finished her rounds of dripping cocktails.   I admire her fighting spirit.  She beat the Monster.  If she can do it, I can do it too!

With both of their maternal grandparents, a maternal great aunt, their paternal grandmother, and now their mother having cancer, my kids are genetically screwed. Dr K talked to us about genetic testing for the kids.  Evidently, there is now a way to check for a cancer gene - a way to prevent it from turning on?

Maybe tomorrow’s tomorrow will bring the answer.

The fireworks over Siletz Bay last night were spectacular!  Being right under them is so much more fun.  The kids yelled and giggled all the way through them.  Brandi especially.  Jaymi was absolutely correct when she sold her line about Tuesday’s small show being just an extra.  Last night was the finale that topped off a perfect day.

Was it perfect because of itself, or was it perfect because we made it that way?  Did we get our attitude from the day or vice versa?  I can’t believe we were able to do as much as we did in one day.  Memories.  We were after memories.

Don’t wait until you are faced with a Monster to make memories with your children.  Hold hands with your spouse.  Tell the people that belong to you that you love them.  Make friends with those you don’t know and make peace with those you know too well.  Live every day to the fullest.

Make memories.

Don’t wait until Tomorrow.  It might not come.

9:00p
I slept most of the day after I wrote this morning.  Haha.  Memory Making takes a lot out of you!   I missed a bunch of phone calls.  I’ll make them up tomorrow.  I did speak to my best friend in Southern California.  Nalana and I met online!  We have actually only seen each other three or four times, but we are very close.  Funny when you meet someone and it all just clicks.  She is one of those superwomen.  In other words she is a Military Wife.  It takes a certain kind of person to keep the proverbial home fires burning.  She doesn’t know it, but she is one of my heroes.  She is strong and resilient and I am so lucky to have her as my friend.

Morning

“Let freedom ring. Let the white dove sing. Let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning. Let the weak be strong. Let the right be wrong. Roll the stone away. Let the guilty pay. It’s Independence Day.”

I woke up with this Martina McBride song in my head. Today is the 4th of July, and I plan on having a blast. Today I am gonna play with my kids and my hubby and cast off my monster. For today.

Tomorrow I will resume the previously scheduled programming that today is going to interrupt.

Last night we took the kids to Depoe Bay to see their fireworks. Smart town, that Depoe Bay. Sandwiched between two bigger towns, they must have figured out a while ago how to get their share of the tourist dollars and decided to beat Lincoln City and Newport to the party a day earlier. We came late so we had to sit quite a way from the throng and the booms. But it was nice. As Jaymi explained to a complaining Brandi (who just wanted the boom and the lights to match up) “This is just an extra. Tomorrow’s fireworks will be all FINALE. And the Finale will be a Finale’s FINALE!” Out of the mouths of babes.

Tomorrow’s fireworks.

I had one small thought that I quickly put away. “Wonder what the fireworks will look like from Heaven?” Next year I will be watching the Fireworks from a beach chair on the white sand of the Gulf of Mexico. In TEXAS! Not the white clouds of Heaven. Heaven will have to wait, ’cause Momma’s not going anywhere yet.

But the small thought was there.

*******************
Night

It is now 8:45p and we are sitting on the beach on Siletz Bay. Right smack dab across the water from where the fireworks will be shooting off. Finale’s Finale just as Jaymi said. Boom and Bah right together tonight baby! The kids are building sandcastles. There are rockets going off everywhere and bon fires burning all around. There is someone behind me somewhere strumming on a guitar. The sun is just above the horizon. My toes are getting cold, but the sand feels good. I feel good. It’s been a wonderful day. Early afternoon brought the best small-town parade ever. The kids had a blast scrambling for candy thrown from the nothing-spectacular floats. The crowd was friendly and the temperature just right. After 45 minutes of clowns and funny cars, we walked down to the beach to avoid the exiting traffic and played tag with the surf for an hour. Dan and I tried to explain what the Gulf beaches will be like, but white sand and warm water is beyond their imagination. Home for a quick lunch and then we went to Devil’s Lake for a swim. It was the first time we took them there. The water was chilly, but way warmer than the ocean. They all had a blast. I watched them from my chair while reading my book. I wanted to join them, but I couldn’t take a chance of lake water somehow finding it’s way into my wound. It’s healed over and seems to be closed tight, but it wasn’t worth the chance of some other yuck getting in there. After the swim, we made our way here to Siletz bay and had dinner at Mo’s -famous for it’s chowder. Then plopped our selves down on the beach to wait. Dan has gone to get us coffee. I couldn’t wait until I got home to tell you about it. (I am sitting here on the beach writing this on my phone’s notepad. Isn‘t technology grand?) The only thing that would make this better is if Kelli and Tim were here with us.

Happy Birthday, America! It’s Independence Day!

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Slow news.

I had a sleepy day today.  I split my time between my chair on my porch and my bed. There was one interesting (in a highly annoying way) happening though.  Had my first row with a tribal visitor. This mother didn’t see anything wrong with the fact that her son pushed my son into the girl’s bathhouse and held the door shut while he screamed bloody murder. She didn’t bat an eye when I explained that her son then kicked Rob several times when he escaped.  I wouldn’t have said anything at all if later her son hadn’t plopped himself down on Rob’s matchbox car collection and refuse to move. I had told Rob just to stay away from this child- he would be gone soon anyway. But while trying to collect the cars under the boy, in the nicest way possible mind you, his mother came up and asked if there was a problem.  So I told her there was, in the nicest way possible.  She did ask her son why he did it, but never suggested that he say he was sorry.  I got the feeling that she knew he wouldn’t be even if she did.

Because I said Rob couldn’t play with her little DAMIAN anymore (No, of course I didn‘t call him Damian to her face!), she tried to get the rest of the kids in her tribal party banned from playing with my girls too.  That lasted about an hour.  Once the other mothers figured out that if their girls couldn’t play with my kids, then THEY would have to entertain them, the prohibition was lifted.   I’m sure they all know how bad little Damian is.  If they didn’t before, they learned it later when the little imp stood in the middle of the road with a real bullwhip (who brings a bullwhip to a campground anyway?) and swung it at all the screaming girls riding past on their little pink bicycles.

Oh well. That’s life in the fast lane.

I am about to make little pizzas for dinner and later we are going to see fireworks.

If I don’t get back to you later, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

I am sitting outside my RV in my favorite chair, under the awning.  I have a small rug here, four chairs and a couple little tables.  I call this my porch.  The last spot we were in looked out over the lawn, exposed to the park players.  This new place is sandwiched between other RVs.  There are three tall trees in a row between my porch and the next motorhome. With the awning high against the trees, the porch feels like a “Florida Room”.   Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what a Florida Room is.  Most people here in Oregon don’t know what that is - including my own kids.  And three of them were born in Florida.  Think of a lanai or sunroom.  That will work.  I like it here in this new spot more than I thought I would.  My porch is cozier now.

The view out the back of my porch is something I think I am supposed to look at.  It puzzles me.  The awning and trees perfectly frame a section of hillside that has been cleared of trees.  Here in Oregon, trees are valued highly.

When a forest is harvested, strict guidelines are followed.  Trees are cut in small sections at a time. Each section is cut on a time schedule so that no complete hillside is ever cleared at one time.  This is good.  This balances our tourist trade with the major wood industry. In Oregon, we have the view, the trees, and computers.  Oh and coffee.  Can’t forget the coffee. (How could you when there is one coffee place for each man, woman, and child … Ok, it just seems that way.)

It may seem that I am rambling on, but I do have a point.

The section of cut trees framed by my porch is cleared except for one lone tree left growing in the middle very near the top of the hill.  I don’t understand why “they” left that one tree.  But I tend to stare at it a lot.  I like trees, but I am not usually moved by one as I am this one tree. Sometimes I feel like that one tree standing exposed in a flattened field.  I don’t know the statistical minutia of the number of people currently battling cancer, but I imagine each one sometimes feels like that lone tree on the hill up there, all alone and exposed.

Now, the biggest thing that puzzles me about that tree is what happens to it at night.  I am not talking about evening now. By night I mean 12 or 1 am.  I have always suffered from insomnia.  I take a handful of sleep inducing pills every night, but I still can’t fall right asleep.  Especially now.  Who can sleep soundly with a monster growing inside them. So I come out on my porch and read late at night. (Much to the dismay of my neighbors, I’m sure.)   Something so strange and majestic happens to that tree after midnight.  We have been in this new spot since Thursday.  Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday I have watched that tree as it starts to glow. (yes, I know, but stay with me for a minute).  There is a light coming from behind the hillside that shines into the clouds and aluminates the tree.  I don’t know what is over there on the other side of the hill.  But it is so beautiful that I am tempted to wake everyone to come and see my tree glowing!  Yet I haven’t.  I think that is my sign from above.  It says that being alone on that hill, that tree is somehow being watched and nurtured and cared for and illuminated for it’s singular strength.  It survived when others didn’t.  It is alive and stands in memorial for its mates that are gone.

I want to be that lone tree up there on the hill.

*********************

My oldest daughter just called me.  What a treat.  She is 18 and on her own.  She is beautiful and smart and a joy to me . . . Now that she is on her own! Haha. No offence Kel!  Everything that makes a successful adult makes for a difficult teenager.   But it seems that the pain was worth it.  I am very proud of the way she turned out.   One down, three to go.   When Kelli was 9, we had Brandi. Then boom, boom, the other two came after. (You need to watch what you pray for, ’cause God has a sense of humor!) Now, I have them up to 9, 8, and almost 7. I can’t leave them now.  Half-way baked.  I will be that lone tree.  If not for myself, for them.

I have news for the Monster: I may have IT, but IT doesn’t have me.

Sunday is a day to wake late. Waking late means that the pain gets a head start on me. When I can feel the cancer, it makes me think about things I don’t want to think about. Like who gets my stuff if I don’t make it. Like I should start writing letters to the kids to be read at certain times in their lives. Kelli’s 21st birthday, her wedding day, the birth of her first child. Or the day Brandi and Jaymi get their period or goes to their prom. The day Robbie gets his drivers license and takes the car out alone for the first time. Or the day Dan finds someone new to make him happy. OH Lord, I don’t want to think of any of that. But the pain reminds me that living through this is not a guarantee. I have to start setting the alarm on Saturday night.

The day got better after I got out of my PJ’s and took a walk around the park. It was a beautiful day. It’s funny how your perceptions change after you clean yourself up and put on some makeup. Haha. We all lazed around the day until around 3:00 when Dan took the kids and the dirty clothes to the laundro-mat. Without ME! I went shopping without the kids! Here in this small beach town you can’t just go to one store and buy all your groceries. You have to go here to get that and there to get this. By the time I got home and made dinner it was 8:00. Late one sorry. When the day starts at ten it ends at ten too!

The tourists are out in droves and no one thought to tell them to be nice on their vacation. After the fourth or fifth time I got cut off or zoomed pass I wanted to yell out the window, “Hey, stop that! Don’t you know I have cancer in my BUTT CHEEK?!”

How the heck did I get cancer in my butt cheek anyway? I mean there is all kinds of cancer. Do you know anyone who has “Butt Cheek Cancer“? How “asinine!” Oh my, I just remembered something. My Dad used to tell me not to be so asinine! Maybe Dad knew what he was talking about after all. Sorry Dad, I should have listened.

Butt Cheek Cancer.

Maybe tomorrow I will get a better name for it.

Rhabdomyosarcoma sounds better. So what if it is mainly a childhood cancer. At least it will have a name. (A “childish ass”. I have been called that too, come to think of it.) Fitting.

Tomorrow, I’m going to ask for a name.