Having Gone Into The Woods Together...
I just spoke with my relative and she said that I could write here about her experience specifically:
My own 82-year-old mother had breast cancer while I was away; had a lumpectomy with a core biopsy, which showed no further cancer; and now is getting ready, perhaps, to fight cancer's return. In fact, when she agreed that I could name her specifically, my mother said:
"Ask the people who read your blog if they have any experience with someone who's much older, doing radiation or taking the medicine -- Kathy [my sister, who survived breast cancer herself in the past year and a half] will know what the medication's called."
I called Kathy and she said that it's called either Tamoxifen or Arimidex.
"Also," my mother said, "Ask them if any of their elderly relatives were asked to do genetic testing."
When I mentioned that to Kathy, she said, "If Mom had talked to me about it, I'd have told her that it's a good idea for her other daughters; I did it for you and Deb and learned that I'm negative for BRCA1 and BRCA2. That doesn't mean that Mom's negative and she should find out because then you and Deb could make informed decisions. When women find out that their immediate relatives are positive, they sometimes opt to take radical prevention measures."
"Like lopping off their breasts, right?"
"Right, and having an oophorectomy because it's a huge predictor of ovarian cancer, too."
Caryn Lesnoy, my middle-school friend, is buried next to my father; Caryn developed ovarian cancer in high school....I should go visit my dad's grave, now that I'm back in the country. It has been awhile....
I Can't Bear Losing Her
My mother is elemental. My mother is essential. I think I love to swim because of how I'm reminded of swimming around inside my mother pre-birth.
"Will I even be around for five more years to take the medicine?" my mother asked the doctor.
"God," he replied, "could take you sooner."
"'Take me where?' I should have asked him," she said.
I laughed and we hung up shortly after, and Pat and I went to Shabbat services. At shul, I saw a poem in our new siddur (prayerbook), by Jane Kenyon, "Let Evening Come."
The best lines made my Adam's apple swell and put tears in my eyes: "Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid./ God does not leave us/ comfortless, so let evening come."
Several years ago, Pat took me to see "Into the Woods" on Broadway. I'm pretty sure that I've written about it before, and how I loved these lines from "No One Is Alone; last time, though, I was referring to how my father necessarily had to leave me "halfway through the wood" due to his death from bile-duct cancer at 56:
Mother cannot guide you.
Now you're on your own....
Still, you're not alone.
No one is alone. Truly.
No one is alone.
Sometimes people leave you.
Halfway through the wood...
But no one is alone.
Comfort by God
Twenty minutes ago, the phone rang. It was our neighbor, Sam. "Are you busy?"
"For you, Sam, no," I said.
He laughed and said, "Well, your old neighbor's here and wants to come say hi."
Sam told me who it was and I said, "Of course," and then called down to Pat, who was watching a football marathon, and we answered the door moments later.
Our former neighbor, who we hadn't seen for nearly a decade, since his distant move with his wife and then teenaged kids, wanted to catch up on how his family was and how we were. "You'll see my face more often, since my parents are still nearby and my dad's got Alzheimer's now."
I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's on anyone, but I do feel like Jane Kenyon is right, and that, "God does not leave us comfortless," that is, just as evening had come, literally, and I was busying myself, blogging here about my sick mother, a face from healthier times arrived to share his trial with his dad. Stephen Sondheim's right, too, "...no one is alone."
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