I didn’t write a single post the entire month of February, did I? One day, I was going right along, writing my blog posts, trudging back and forth to work, doing my thang and the next thing I know 29 days have gone by.
February was… um, not really sure how to say this delicately. February sucked big, fat, hairy…ugh if I say that then I will have even more pervy spam messages and icky Twitter followers. February was not good. There was the usual frigid temps, snowy commutes, short days, fevers and colds, business trips out of town…blah, blah, blah.
But one day two weeks ago–give or take–my world, my reality as I know it flipped upside down. The pleasant bubble of blue skies and picket fences I like to live in popped.
Some things are too terrible to utter. Too horrifying to say. (NB: The title on the YouTube clip is someone else’s. I couldn’t bear it if you thought I didn’t know the difference between “too” and “to.”)
Yep, the C word. No, not that C word. The other C word. Cancer. My older sister was diagnosed with lung cancer. My healthy, non-smoking, vegetarian, yoga-devoted sister had a cough that wouldn’t go away. Chest xray, MRI, PET scan, biopsy…cancer. Just like that. Nothing is the same.
Not the same for me. Certainly not the same for her, or her husband or her mom, her kids, her friends. And she has a lot of friends. A lot of support. An outpouring of care and concern, good vibes, prayers, positive thinking, karmic waves are all traveling through the universe her way.
And she is tough. Ask anyone. She stands her ground. Not afraid to make waves. Speaks her mind. Assertive, tough, brave, strong. All these words describe her. And all these wonderful traits are going to help her navigate this incredibly trying, surreal time.
Today is the first day I felt ready to write about it. And I felt a little nervous telling this story, her story. But I have to. Because it is my story, too.
So, here I am. Back to blogging about my struggles as a working mom with three boys. Sometimes I will write about the kids and the darnedest things they say. Sometimes I will tell you about the juggling act of life and how many balls were dropped that day. Sometimes I will just have to comment on current pop culture. (Dude, Morgan Freeman is marrying his step-granddaughter! How did I not know this?!)
And, now, sometimes I will write about cancer.
Because that’s now part of the narrative–as middle D likes to say when he tells me something particularly shocking, surprising or otherwise out of the ordinary in his day: “True story.”
Clip from St. Elmo’s Fire the 1985 Joel Schumacher classic starring Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Andi McDowell, etc.
