Anne SG and the Big C

I have just finished reading  My Sister’s Keeper.  If you have read it, you know it is about the monumental impact that a deadly cancer has on a family–not just the child who suffers from it, but on her parents and siblings as well.  It moved me to tears for so many reasons, but also made me realize that I have not stopped to think of my parents during my diagnosis and treatment.  As a mother, I can relate to how utterly unspeakable it is to even think of losing a child.  My children–gosh–all I can say is that I am so grateful that it is I who has cancer, not them.

I don’t know how my parents feel about this because I haven’t really asked them, and I’m sure they don’t offer to tell me because they don’t want to upset me.  But reading the book reminds me that I am not just a mother, but am also a child.  Their child.  And it must grieve them to know I am ill.

For Christmas, my brother and his wife sent me a DVD–on it was, among other things, some old home movies from the 70s that I guess they had transferred to DVD.  I sat down casually to watch, and then became entranced.  There on the video were my siblings and me as children in matching Christmas pajamas–my infant sister still bald, my brother with his blond mop and me, bouncing around like a crazy person on my Hoppity-Horse.  I saw my mother with long hair for the first time in memory, and realized how much I really do look like her.  And I saw my three grandparents who are now gone, and my heart ached and ached and ached.  They were so much a part of my childhood, and I still  miss them.  And my grandmother–the one who died eventually of breast cancer–there she was, beside my grandfather in his John Wayne-esque days of bluff and bluster.

We pass so much along in our families.  Today Arden was being especially helpful to her sisters and I was feeling crummy.  I talked to her and told her how proud I am of her, and how I hoped she would be a good help to Gammy next week when I’m gone having surgery.  Later, I chastised myself for putting that burden on her.  She’s certainly entitled to be a little kid, not Mom’s Helper all the time.  She’s so responsible, so serious. I wonder if some day she will look back on this time as The Year Mom Had Cancer.  I hope not….but I don’t know if it’s avoidable.

Being a family is something of a land mine sometimes.  And sometimes, it’s everything good in the world.   Being a mother means questioning every thought, every decision, every choice, all while being forced to grow up and make those choices thoughtfully even while second guessing myself.  It means wondering every day if I am setting a good example, if I am laughing enough with them, if I am leaving terrible psychic scars on their spirits.

Perhaps for graduation from high school I will offer them psychotherapy in lieu of college.