Since it has been a few weeks since the weekly Bruce sighting, I thought I'd double down as it were to maintain the Bruce-iness.
I've had the oddest realization.
Yeah, odd even for Moi.
As I have mentioned, Gordon and I have both lost mothers on our birthdays.
Trust me, I couldn't make this up if I tried.
These two women were polar opposites of each other in many ways.
In other ways not so much.
They were both very quiet women who gave new meaning to stubborn and no one dared to cross them.
On the other hand...
Gordons mother was devoutly Southern Baptist.
She neither smoked nor drank and was faithfull in her attendence and extremely active in church stuff.
My step-mother on the other hand was a wine drinking former smoker and lapsed Catholic.
See what I mean ?
And yet....
Cancer knocked on both their doors.
Gordon and I hadn't been married for too long when his mother was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
We are lucky to have one of the worlds best cancer treatment centers here in Houston so she had her treatments there.
And so for at least 10 years , she was lucky to be in remission.
Now, when your loved one is diagnosed with cancer, lets be honest , the first thing you do is flip out and then panic.
And then if you have any brains at all, you compose yourself, grow a set and carry on.
You educate yourself and try to be as involved in the three ring circus as you can be or are allowed to be, depending on the circumstances.
And then things calm down a bit if you are lucky.
If you are lucky , you have a state of grace known as remission.
And you fool yourself into taking a breath and a moment , thinking " It's all gonna be okay .
And so it is...until it ain't.
Either you have to deal with heart damage and congestive heart failure from the radiation and chemotherapy or worse still, the reemergence of the cancer .
When cancer comes back, it is generally pretty pissed off.
And again you deal with it .
You are used to it by now, living with it in the back of your mind every day..the whats .
What if ?
What now ?
Every damn day its there, silently lurking.
Most days you put a brave face on because you know that you not only owe it to your loved one, you owe it to yourself to keep it together so you can carry on .
You owe it to your spouse , your child if you have one , your job and your friends.
You just get used to the voices in the back of your head and the panic that sets off the OMG's when the phone rings late at night without warning.
The stress and the fear and the occasional anger becomes a part of who you now are.
And then it's over.
And a part of you is changed forever.
I will never be anyones child again.
That alone is both sad and liberating.
While I will never have the comfort of a parental figure in times of crisis, I also now know that I will never disappoint them again, whether in a real or imagined way.
I am the eldest now of my family.
It's a strange thing to grasp.
This is both liberating and a bit sad.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a huge weight has been lifted , and yet in a way, I am a bit adrift..
Have a great weekend and hug those you love.
Ciao,
Aunty Pol
