I’ve struggled within trying to figure out how to tell my story, how to describe and discuss all the experiences I’ve had with cancer throughout what seems to have been my entire life.
The women in my life who have been cut down in their prime due to the untimely onslaught of this disease is legion. From progenitors, to siblings, to girlfriends, to my mother-in-law and even some of the males in my family - how all of my immediate female family members that have struggled with this foe have unfortunately lost their battle and died prematurely, fallen victims to this devastatingly hostile plague that has predominantly targeted womankind taking them from their husbands, children, family and loved ones long before their time.
My story begins with my natural mother who died when I was four years old from Breast Cancer that had metastasized throughout her entire body by the time she was 44 years of age. Her’s was an almost twenty year battle, fought valiantly until she succumbed leaving behind five minor children ranging from 2 to 10 years age to be split apart and raised by grandparents and an elder siblings.
My mother’s sisters were also victims of this plague, one to Breast Cancer and the other to Ovarian Cancer. Both leaving minor children to be raised by their fathers and other family members. My grandmother who raised me had a an almost forty year fight against this disease having lost one of her breast in her thirties, then years later cancer was found in her uterus causal to the poor medical care Blacks received in the forties scar tissue from a tubal pregnancy mutated and infested her entire reproductive system then spread into her intestines and colon. She was treated, went into remission for over ten years but it returned during my junior year in High School. By then, there was nothing that could be done. She died in 1981 at the beginning of my third year in college.
My eldest sister went three rounds with Breast Cancer. The first occurring during her late twenties wherein she underwent a mastectomy of her right breast. The second go-round was in her mid thirties wherein she lost her left breast. The third time cost her life. She was only 45 years old when she died in 1987.
My sister, Joan whose picture is posted was my closest sibling relationship and dearest friend. She was four years older than I and we grew up together even though we lived in separate households – she with her father’s mother and me, with my father’s mother. I was the thorn in her side, the little sister who followed her everywhere she went – often sent along with her and her girlfriends when they would have preferred to not have me tagging along behind them. I adored her and looked up to her something fierce. I wore her hand me downs (even though they didn’t fit me all that well – we’re totally different body types) and loved sitting watching her do whatever it was she was doing – whether it was doing her hair that was lots longer than mine at the time or cooking because she loved to cook even as a young girl and when she was sewing because she was always good at that too. She was the domestic one, I was the musical/artistic one. We both had to take piano lessons but she didn’t excel at it. Whereas we were both taught to cook, sew, do needlework, etc. but I didn’t excel at those things. We were both blessed with beautiful voices and sang in church, with me often accompanying her on piano and in our school choirs throughout high school with me having achieved a full music scholarship to a private college in West Texas. She went to nursing school but couldn’t stand the sight of blood so ended up going to business college eventually ending up in the medical field specializing in medical records management.
We were both late bloomers not having come into our beauty until high school or later and we both had our children when in our early twenties, she a girl and me a boy. She’d left right out of high school and relocated to Seattle along with my brother Lester so after college and having had my son, I followed. Those were some of the best years of my life, living with her in that second floor two bedroom apartment with the huge picture window in West Seattle with our two young children, struggling to survive and growing into women together as we carved out a life for ourselves. We were one another’s closest friend and confidant always there to support, encourage and back the other up. We laughed, we cried, we sang, we danced, we played, we loved our children and enjoyed our lives facing every challenge together and celebrating each one that we overcame. Showering one another with gifts, our favorite cake and ice cream on our birthdays and making sure each had wonderful Mother’s Day gifts when no one else remembered to send either one of us even as much as a card. What one didn’t have, the other did. When I moved out, just a little
ways away we still spent more time together than apart. We were the other’s shadow as well as being the wind beneath one another’s wings.
The year I met my husband to be ironically turned out to be the year she decided to move back home to New Mexico. It was hard to watch her leave me behind while she went back to pursue what she believed would be her land of milk and honey, and it was for awhile. We talked weekly, sometimes more and our long distance bills definitely reflected that. In 1998 she sustained an accident having fallen and injured one of her breast. In the process of treatment and due to the injury, the doctor found a cyst within which was a malignant tumor that was fairly progressed thus beginning what was a three year battle with lymphoma. Hers was a very aggressive form of the disease and she unfortunately went into denial not responding to the dire prognosis concerning her condition refusing to have a mastectomy as she should have done. Because the cancer was in her lymph system it spread throughout her body to every major organ within a very short amount of time due to the failure to arrest it’s growth. She died in 2001 at age 43 and part of me went with her. I miss her although I don’t think of her every single day like I use to, but I still think of her often especially around holidays and birthdays or when something in passing reminds of her, something she liked or something we did together or shared in years passed. I have felt lost in many ways since losing her and the void left in my life by her death has yet to be filled.
My life has been indelibly, irrevocably influenced and impacted by this disease because almost every close female relationship I’ve had with familial role models as well as friendships has been touched by this disease. So many things others take for granted like having their mothers to help them when they mismanaged their money and got into trouble financially, to help plan their weddings or to be there when they birth their babies, to babysit, share recipes and the preparation of holiday dinners, to go shopping with, talk about boys and men with, to talk about the girl becoming a woman stuff then upon reaching middle age what to expect and how to cope with being menopausal….I’ve never had those things. I didn’t have a mother nor grandmother to go to for those woman to woman talks about child rearing, for advice on how to deal and cope with the typical husband woes and how to deal with life in general, to find balance as a woman, wife and mother; instruction in how to be a woman, self care and how to keep things in perspective.
When my sister died I not only grieved her absence, shortly afterward I became obsessed with my own mortality fearing that since I was next in line chronologically that my number would be up soon, that my days on this earth were somehow numbered. I had nightmares and walked around in terror, in a perpetual state of fear for over five years. Then one day I woke up and realized, “Hey, I’m still here! I’m alive and have plenty of living yet to do before my time is up, so I’m going to start living my life instead waiting to die!” I’m the first immediate female family member to have watched my child walk down that isle at his high school graduation, my older sisters didn’t get to experience that. I’m now in my late forties and I’m the first of my siblings including my mother to have seen and experienced this stage of life, to have the night sweats, mood shifts and marathon menstrual cycles of menopause. How fortunate I am and I thank God every day that I am still in the land of the living…..I take none of it for granted because I truly know without a doubt that I have been blessed.
Babeland