Last week I was blessed to have the opportunity to visit with Auntie and Uncle. It wasn’t a pleasure trip, unfortunately, but it was beautiful in its own way. Auntie is not well. She has stage IV lung cancer, diagnosed back at the beginning of this year.
I am truly in awe of Auntie’s strength and determination through the full gamut of cancer treatments — chemo, radiation, pills, and more pills… For a woman who avoided doctors throughout her life, seeing what a good patient she is, a real determined and compliant fighter, is quite amazing. I am so sad for her, and yet so very proud of her resilience and will to be there for her family. Yet I also feel helpless, and powerless to do any more than love her and my uncle and cousins and lend a hand when they ask. Not the sort of disease I would wish on my worst enemy… They say cancer “sucks.” I would agree.
This week back in my own world has been hard as I find myself reflecting back to a special visit with my aunt and uncle, remembering the quiet chats, warm hugs, shared experiences of our days together. We talked about the present, yet we talked a great deal about past memories and joys, with laughter woven throughout the tasks related to care-taking and keeping up a somewhat structured routine. It was rather stupid, we all agreed, to have this cancer stuff complicate our time together.
Yet, when I think about it, most all of our visits through the years came with some sort of setback or mishap… For example, there were the times we were traveling on some remote two-lane highway and my uncle’s car would overheat, or a tire would go flat (and come to think of it, that happened more than a few times in more than several states…). And there was the time uncle pulled my overstuffed suitcase out of the trunk of his car in a newly surfaced hotel parking lot in Boise, Idaho and the zipper broke dumping the entire contents of my existence all over the hot, sticky tar! I am not sure who cried more — uncle who hurt his back or me who had ruined clothing for the trip! He was not pleased. I was miserable. Auntie had to console both of us for days… Such a saint!
There was another time when we stopped in a 24-hour coffee shop late one night in downtown Seattle, just for coffee, just in time to witness a fist fight, guns pulled, and cops racing in… Just going out for coffee? Uncle had a notion to try to break up the fight. Auntie held him back, and probably kept us all out of jail! What an experience!
There was the time when my 8-year old cousin pestered all day for Mexican food for dinner. We found this authentic place filled with incredible aromas, each ordered a platter, and ended up with so much food on the table that we all lost our appetites. Uncle was not pleased with all the uneaten food. Auntie did her best to pack up what she could to place in the ice chest in the car. This was back before the days of microwaves… I recall having a cold burrito for breakfast the next day.
So, I am not sure why we have this illusion that all time shared with those we love happened wearing rose-colored glasses. Shit happens more than we care to admit. So I suppose I could reframe Auntie’s cancer as the shitty part of our most recent visit… Guess the best way to make sense of it is to smile, laugh about what we can, and be grateful that we shared the experiences of life with people we loved and admired…