Truth or Dare

I said to him, “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom.”

“It’s ok, that’s life – that’s the way it works sometimes.”

I said, “I know, but still, it’s hard.”

“Thanks, but that’s life.”

Repeating those words – “that’s life,” as if softening the impact of death.  Letting the words roll off your tongue, being better than death because you understand that it’s part of life.  It makes it easier, I suppose.  But not really. 

You see, his mother recently died from metastatic breast cancer.  She was treated years ago for breast cancer and made it out alive. She went through chemotherapy and radiation and matintenace chemo just to make sure those damn cancer cells minded their business. She was almost dead then. But she came out alive.  Pink and alive and her hair grew back, for the most part.

She spent the rest of her years truly in awe of modern medicine, and on her knees practically each day in gratitude for her new lease on life.  Green was greener, inside jokes really meant something to her on a level that people who aren’t almost dead will never understand.  Her grandchildren were her world and she was deeply worried when her husband had a suspiciously vague shadow on a routine lung x-ray.  Her husband was fine – he ended up having some kind of pneumonia that antibiotics crushed.  But she was growing cancer again at that time.  It came back.  That shit came back.

Metestatic cancer is a real pisser because it’s non specific to it’s origin.  Here’s what I mean:

The way I understand it is that metastatic breast cancer is breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast to other organs in the body.  That shit is in the bones, lungs, liver and/or brain.  Even though it’s spread to other vital parts of the body, it’s still breast cancer. There’s a lot to digest here – breast cancer cells in bones.

His mom had breast cancer cells in her brain and bones.  They were eating though the chemo. Could not be stopped. They treated her this time with an aggressive plan of chemo and radiation – really hit her hard with the kitchen sink, if you know what I mean.  A fresh round of full blown doses of chemo to her treatment plan, but her pink, lean body and her pulsing organs couldn’t survive that shit.  Draining fluid out of her lungs was a more frequent occurrence at the end. 

I don’t even have metastatic breast cancer, or breast cancer for that matter – but this shit scares me.  Cancer is shit and so is chemo – but only one can win in the body at a time.  She went from being almost dead to dead-dead in about two months. 

But thats life, I guess.

For me, at least, cancer was partly love. With each appointment, each fragment of a second, a cancer patient is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances you can’t help but love. You love your cat, your mom and dad, your kids, steaming noodles in broth, your breath, your future — everything that might be lost or never come to be. Closeness with death carries with it a corresponding new closeness with life. Food has more flavor, green is greener. You love the way your husband brings you coffee in the morning. You love the miracle of your own enduring capacity for love. You love your friends you’ve made in your chemo rooms — a woman named Elizabeth, my pal. She wrote letters to me and bought my daughter a newborn outfit.  I wonder if that was weird for her, buying my baby an outfit knowing that I was knee deep in chemo.  She felt love too. That love was put into real live action when we would run into each other at the farmers market with our families.

Her husband had my type of cancer, but he was a about 40 years older than me.  I wonder if that was weird for her too.  I was younger than her own children.  She had grandkids in high school.  My daughter was just born and I had a two year old – I’m certain she also gave her a gift too.  She felt love.   

At some point her husband’s heart stopped beating.  Just stopped one afternoon while eating lunch she made for the two of them.

Elizabeth and I went our separate ways – I’m a little ashamed it had to be that way.  I didn’t know what else to do. So I quietly drifted away from her and back into my life of chemo and babies, and surviving cancer.

I loved the woman – she cared so much, had so much love. But I’m alive. Her husband’s dead. A likely story, I guess.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton