Tidbits and tears and lawns, neighbors and moms

At the cancer treatment center it is impossible not to hear what others are enduring.  Today, I heard a woman get her first treatment instructions from several people.  I heard them talk to her about starting the IV.  I heard them talk to her about the expected side effects this coming week.  I heard them talk to her about the steroid reaction (a speech I never received by the way).  I heard her friend that drove her talk too loud and too much and not letting the doctor and nurse say what they needed to say.

Then it was all quiet over there.

I got up to go to the bathroom and looked her way.  Her eyes were red and she had tears on her cheeks.

I so felt for her.  I so knew her fear.  I so wished I had a magic wand to make her life better.  I smiled and waved.

*******

Last weekend I think was the final fireworks of my last carbo treatment.  I hurt.  I was bloated again.  I could feel my organs screaming at me for loading them with this chemical and making them process it.

I became a little fearful remembering that this was how my last blood transfusion need started.  I'm glad the blood is there for me to use when needed, but I'm not so sure I want someone else's DNA parading about in my blood vessels.  It gives my imagination too many hours of pondering.

I went out for a walk.

It was a cold blustery day and I dressed for it in my pink rain coat that I now loathe because pink is all the color of breast cancer and even though I love the color pink, I don't want to see it so much right now.  And wearing that pink raincoat every time I go outside is like suddenly not saying so much anymore that "pink is such a fun color to wear in the rain", it's more like a big arrow pointing to me and announcing "there goes cancer"....

But I went for the mile walk around our street and upon looking up facing the wind saw that I was just a few steps away from our neighbor on the lake that sometimes invites us to boat with them on their pontoon boat in the summer. 

I couldn't avoid him.  I was not feeling good enough to want to stand and chat.  I just wanted to get in my walk and go back home and lay down and try to find some way to soothe the ravaged organs yelling at me.

He looked at me so kindly - my eyelashes now count four and my eyebrows count three - so I don't like to see people I haven't seen in a while and startle them, but he looked at me so kindly and asked me how I was doing.  He said he was so sorry to hear of my disease.  He said anytime I might need anything to call him.  He said that if I even needed someone to run a glass of water up to me when I am sick in bed and no one was there to do it, to call him, that he would even sit in my living room and watch some questionable movies and wait until Scott got back home.

There were tears on my cheeks unbidden.  It seems my ability to suppress my feelings coming out of my eyes is gone most days.

He did the most touching thing - we are neighbors that know each other but don't know each other - and when he saw the tears because of his kind words - he reached his finger out and wiped them away.

He touched me and just smiled at me gently.

I almost avoided that moment.

*******

Even though today we had a long drive and a longer day at the cancer treatment center that resulted in us being relieved to get treatments, making us happy, we were bushed.  Smashed. 

We stopped at Walmart on the way home.  I need to figure out how to do eyelashes.  I have watched tutorials online, but am still puzzled.  Cancer treatments and the whole day is just tiring.  But Walmart on top of that just plain shut me down and all I want to say is put me to bed for twenty years Rip Van Winkle.

Scott was tired too.  It's hard work hearing how your wife is going to be further abused.  It's even more-so to watch it.  And he has every time.  Then I make him help me sneak into a store, avoid all the germs I can and ask him which eyelashes look more real.

It was a lot.

We pulled down our street and he is fussing a little about all the work he has to do the next couple of days.  Laundry, some cleaning, dishes, cooking for a fussy stomach, -- and school.  Although he did not complain about it, nursing is on that list as well.  And counselor.

We pulled down our street while he is listing this and I am half asleep still in some injectable-Benadryl-doze-land, and see that our lawn has been mowed.

The grass that he pampers and babies and spends more money on than should be constitutionally allowed; his first concern every spring and last concern each fall.  His grass.  His lawn.

It's all done.  He doesn't have to worry about that or add it to his list.  

It looks awesome.  And it's done.  One less thing he has to do while I slug it out with the chemo drugs this week.

We cannot thank you enough Fred.  Not only are you successful in life and business, but as a lasting, good friend.

And I know if you were sitting beside me right now you would want to wipe the tears off of my cheeks as well. 

*******

Our doorbell rang yesterday.  Scott opened it and our son's mother in law, Lisa, was standing there.  We are friends - I love her.  We have shared two precious little girls for almost five years now and we have sometimes supported each other and helped each other out with child care duties and it is so good to know that someone else other than their parents loves those little girls as much as we do. 

I was upstairs thinking I should get properly clothed before going down and heard some bits and pieces.

She handed Scott a bag from Grandpa's Cheese Barn that had two different types of Sweeties chocolates in it and other goodies.   Then she said to "tell Karen she was praying for her, and loved her and was hoping all the best for her." 

Then I heard Scott say good bye and close the door.  I had missed her, but so treasured her gift and her words.  

I looked in the mirror and saw those feelings falling over my cheeks again. 

*******

My woeful lack of tears for fifty years seems to have been ripped from my person and replaced with the ability to cry when my brain says I should.  They just show up and I could not stop them anymore than I could stop the feelings that have been long suppressed and pushed aside too many times - feelings of honest gratitude; feelings of honest blessing; feelings of honest humility; feelings of love.  Real love being poured out on us.

I see friends that I haven't seen for so long, and I cry, it is so good to see them and it is the most natural response suddenly.

But what makes the tears fall more than anything has been realizing kindnesses and the effort and love and cost that is behind those kindnesses bestowed on us.  It is humbling.  But more than that, it is a deep feeling of wonderment that has never been available before my eyes before in such quantity. 

The Rabbi I listen to reminded me of a verse last week in Psalms where it says God lists every tear and records it and even stores it in a bottle, depending on which translation you use.

I like that.  If these tears are my cleansing, then God has them stored.  And listed. 

And they have been so cleansing.  Cleaning out fifty years of "stuff" that should have been kept clean all along.  That should have been sensed and felt all along.  Things that should never have been pushed aside, and my innards knew that, but I would not usually let the "cleansing" happen.  What was not allowed for so long cannot be stopped now.

*******

We picked up my mom and took her to Easter with us.  It is difficult for her to navigate steps and get into a car.  It is difficult for her walk.  It is difficult for her, like me, to feel at times.

She had a great time watching her great-grand-children play and seek out their eggs.  She had a great time interacting with her grand-babies - my kids - that she rocked and sang to and loved on for years.  We all know that Scotty is her favorite of sorts, and she just shines when he and his sisters lean down and hug her and tell her out loud that they love her.

They do something their mother cannot - we never did that.

When we dropped her off she was standing in my brother's kitchen and Scott and I turned to leave after chatting a bit, and Scott said out loud - go give your mom a hug.

I did.  And the tears were on her cheeks and her eyes were full of me and she said that she used to put my "lots of hair" when I was a baby in a curl on top of my head.  She mourns so that I am going through this, and my husband can see better than me that she needed my touch.  My physical touch.

She goes in for surgery tomorrow to repair a hernia from her surgery last year.  It about killed me to release her into a surgery last year that I wasn't sure her frail body would be ok with.  And I remember just sitting there with her and for the first time in a long time I wept openly and told her I was so sorry for all of this.  And everything else.

Now, again, the tears are on my cheeks thinking of her.  I wish a lot of things for her both past and present, but most of all I wish her an easy heart.  A heart not so heavy with regrets and sadness. 


I hope she knows that God has her tears all stored and listed.  It is somehow healing.