Cancer has been a part of my entire adult life. Not as one battling the giant, but as one who must stand on the sidelines and witness the struggle. I hate it. Always known as someone who gets things done, my usual method of operation is to jump in with both feet and take charge. Not this time. I can’t. It’s not my fight.
My dad was first diagnosed when I was in my early 20s. It was my first taste of witnessing mortality in my parents. Seeing my big strong Daddy lying in a hospital bed shattered the illusion of immortality and rudely delivered me to the reality of my father being human. Dad’s fight was tough but he emerged on the other side of the battle strong and cancer free.
Then it went after my mom. Always the fighter, always the rock, always the strongest, she entered into a literal battle for her life. Ovarian cancer is ugly and it is an extremely evil villain to fight. Often unseen in its earliest most treatable stages, it shows its cowardly self only when the fight will become the toughest to win. I was 29 when Mom began her fight.
The phone rang last week delivering me the news I never wanted to hear. It was my Mom, the warrior, telling me the new chemotherapy stopped working. I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw things, I wanted to take the anger inside and turn it into a fuel that would help my mom with her fight. I don’t remember most of the remaining of the conversation we had, I just remember how it felt. Helpless. The beginning of the end seems to have knocked on our door.
My Type A personality renders completely useless in this situation. I am a doer, not a bystander. The sidelines are not a place I am use to standing, but yet, here I stand. I stand in support of the fight I witness. I stand in awe of the courage I see. I stand in quiet for the strength she shows.
Onward my mom fights, and I continue to stand.
