Spring

So...it is nearly March. Winter has come and gone. I watched the leaves blaze then drop, crisp on the ground. I sat sorrowfully wondering why the sky was so blue, the heavens so bright when the world was dying.

Loss. I've felt too much of it this year.

There I was in Southern California. I'd fled the troubles from home. My mom in my sister's care, her memory gone. My dad so recently passed away stirring up memories I'd tried to run from all of my life.

I was a wimp, but I had run. And California was nothing I had expected it to be. From the winding little hills to the flame colored rooftops to the wonderous Pacific stretching on and on ...California was nothing I thought she was going to be. But I'd landed in Dana Point, and I think it may be quite different than LA, the city on the sea.

So...there I was. Enchanted. Dana Point had romanced me away from any desire to ever return to Texas.

Then I found the dratted lump.

On we came back to Texas. It was a rushed trip. We drove it in 2 days. My husband, myself and three kids. It was miserable and hard. My husband stayed a few days with me then left to go finish the job in California. It was the first week or so of October and he planned to be back by Thanksgiving. My support was gone. I don't think I've ever felt so alone in my life.

I lost my mom in December. While I was having mammograms at MD Anderson she lay there on her death bed slipping away. The lady giving me the mammogram must of thought I was a wimp for crying. I opened my mouth to try to tell her that yes it hurt, but I was crying because of my mom. The words would not come. Only more tears.

Oh, how I want that woman back. Whole in mind and body, as she was before this disease took her.

I lost my breast in January. I try not to complain. I try to keep my tears to myself. People look at me sometimes when I do and suggest that it COULD have been worse. I could have been eaten up with cancer. And I do feel...grateful. I'm glad that breast cancer isn't killing me. For that matter I'm glad the renal cell carcinoma that they found in my kidney almost 10 years ago didn't kill me either. But it isn't the same. I miss my breast. I've never missed my kidney.

So sometimes, like last night, when I am laying in bed, alone, thinking of how grateful I should feel...there is this little angry part of me that asks the Lord, "So what are you trying to say God, that you could have killed me but you didn't?"

I feel as if I've been threatened.

He did, in away, kill a part of me. I'm wounded. I feel deformed. I'm numb in a place that is supposed to be one of a woman's most sensitive places.

Loss.

And we won't even go into my oldest teenage boys ... both whom I've always been close to, always homeschooled...and now I'm watching both of them hold me down while they cut the apron strings. Bad timing and all that. I need them to draw close to me right now. I need their love to shield me from all this pain I feel...and they are pulling away.

Loss.

My world has been shaken. I'm nowhere near the place I was before I went to California in July. I keep thinking maybe if we pack up...carefully packing the same things we took before...drive back ...the same route, stay in the same Holiday Inns and in the same condo once we get there..that maybe I'll wake up..and all of this will have been a bad dream.

Spring is coming...

After my surgery, to cheer myself up I brought home a puppy. A little 5 week West Highland White Terrier. I named him Harry. Harry has to pee about ever 10 minutes. Harry gets taken out almost every 10 minutes. Ok..it is better now that he is 8 weeks old, but not much. We go out a lot but I can't seem to mind. I've had a chance to watch the frost on the ground under a bright full moon. I've listened to the early morning silence. I've gone out right after a rain, the clover looking like nature had come and dusted glitter all over. I've watched the trees bud and green. Swirling white clouds pink as the sun rose..and set.

And now I'm thinking of rebirth. It was all dead but now it is coming back to life.Soon now my teenagers will be mowing the lawn weekly. I have this incredible urge to plant a garden. I want roses and jasmine, gardenias and moon flowers.

Rebirth.

In May I'm scheduled for my 2nd surgery. This one to reconstruct, to recreate my breast. My plastic surgeon will take fat and skin from my abdomen and use it to make two new warm, jiggly breast. Will they be the same? Close probably. Will this nightmare be over? No, probably not. Though she claims to be able to reattach nerves to bring back some sensation, it is not to be complete sensation. I'll be able to feel hot and cold, but not much more. That part of me is gone forever.

But I'll look ok I guess. Maybe. If there are no complications. And if I look ok then everyone can happily go on with their lives and not worry about me anymore, because I'll have been 'fixed'.

And so I ask the Lord, "Ok...so you didn't kill me. But will you reattach my nerves? Make me whole again?"

The leaves some back, the grass comes back, the sun rises and sets every day and everything always is reborn.

But what about me?

Ugh. I complain too much I guess. I just need to be grateful, right? I'm working on it, I promise. Maybe my reconstruction will make it all ok. Maybe. Hopefully. If not...maybe I can talk my husband into moving to Southern California. Now THAT would be nice.