In the same week my book club handed out our March read, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks---a
story involving a woman who died of cervical cancer---one of my Gathering Girls pals
announced that she has stage one cervical cancer. That announcement came within
days of me reading, “Doctors examined her inside and out, pressing on her
stomach, inserting new catheters into her bladder, fingers into her vagina and
anus, needles into her veins.” How's that for dark-side serendipity? In my friend’s case her lady parts had been
removed a month prior but at the time she was being vague about the reason for
the hysterectomy and dumb me, cancer never entered my mind. It wasn’t until she’d had
the first of six chemo infusions that she was ready to talk about the “C” word
to anyone. She had to process the information herself first, she said.
Other than my dad who died of lung cancer in 1999, I’ve
never known a single person with cancer and over the seven months between his
diagnosis and his death, Dad often doubted that he actually had it. He choose
not to get any treatments and other than being on oxygen his life didn’t change
much over those months except my brother and I set up a share-care schedule to give him
a lot more oversight and help around his house. My friend’s son and daughter
have also stepped up to the plate to give her the kind of support that anyone
in that situation couldn’t help but be grateful for and proud to get. Or maybe
mothers just expect that kind of pay-back as their due and why not. I’ve never
been a mother but I’ve seen enough of them in action to know how much time and
energy goes into raising good kids.
All of my Gathering Girls pals have kids and all but one of
them lost their husband’s when their kids were young and they never remarried. The
‘but one’ lost her second life-partner last year but he'd been living in a nursing home a long time. Sadly, I doubt our little social group will
still be around in five years. One lady is diabetic and does dialysis at home, another
has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, a
third has been known to pass out for reasons the doctors can’t pin-point, one lives
with chronic back pain and, of course, there’s our newly anointed cancer
patient. I’m one of the two left, and neither of us has serious medical issues
going on. But at our ages, we’re only a fall away from a broken hip and ending up
in a nursing home like a woman I asked about recently who was absent from the
monthly lecture series. (Her kids sold her condo so she can't go back and she was such an active, vibrant woman.) Egads, I'm doing it again! I'm borrowing trouble from the future, but I do wonder if I'm doomed to wander the earth looking for new
friends like Eeyore looking for his lost tail. Am I going to be that person who hangs around the lobby of a senior-care facility with an invisible sign around my neck that reads: Will you be my friend?
On the other hand, I love how Winnie-the-Pooh tells Eeyore, “You can’t stay in
your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to
them sometimes.” It’s basically the same thing Ann Landers told me when I wrote
to her advice column back in my twenties when I thought I’d never meet my
forever-guy. I could probably find her letter to quote accurately if I
bothered to look in my old diaries but as near as I can remember she said, “Get
out and do things you enjoy doing and it will happen.” So I signed up for every
leisure time class I could find and I joined a bowling league. The rest is history.
And then a few years ago my forever-guy died and I was off again, looking for
friends. This time down at the senior hall and the Gathering Girls group was
born. Like Eeyore rebuilding his house in the forest that keeps getting knocked
down, we have to keep rebuilding our social circles. It never stops. I wish I could see that in a
sunshiny way but I can't.
Eeyore’s Poem (by A.A. Milne)
Christopher Robin is going.
At least I think he is.
Where?
Nobody knows.
But he is going –
I mean he goes
(To rhyme with “knows”)
Do we care?
(To rhyme with “where”)
We do
Very much.
Christopher Robin was presumably going off to school but
the lesson in the story could apply to any loss of friendship or love. Back when I
first set up this blog I found that lesson in the Winnie-the-Pooh quote that is at the top of
this page: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so
hard.” Little Miss. Mary Sunshine couldn’t have said it any better. But today it’s
raining in my Eeyore-like world. Processing the “C” word---even in others you care about---can do that to you. ©
