OK OK...I'm back blogging. Almost couldn't bear to do it.
My sister Stacy just sent me this picture of us. It was taken on my 40th birthday.
I have never seen this picture before and it made me incredibly sad.
First thing that set me off was that fact that SINCE this picture was taken, my sister (and my two beautiful nephews) have moved to Mars. (ok California, but it might as well be Mars). So now, if I am lucky, I get to see Stacy and the boys twice a year.
The rest of what set me off is really shallow...please indulge me.
In that moment I was blissfully unaware of what was around the corner. Not everything in my life was perfect (had major marital problems that were about to explode)...but I physically felt as good as I ever did in my whole life.
My hair, which was always an issue, was finally at a cut that I loved, my weight was great, my energy was super high, my job was going great, my confidence was way way up, I was always on "the Move", my social life was extremely active, ....I LOVED telling people I was turning 40....nobody believed it.
Little did I know when that picture was taken...what was lurking in my right breast.
I MISS that woman in that picture. And no she is not returning. I caught a glimpse of her for a few months between my first treatment and my reoccurance (metastasis really)....but she is long gone.I guess things could always be worse....at least I got a chance to BE that woman. And at least I am here to remember her.
I just wish it didn't make me so damn sad.
3 comments:
Nance.......that makes me sad, too. You have always been and will always be one of the strongest women I know. You are also very determined, energetic, funny and have a spirit that is unstoppable.....
So regardless of the fact that YOU may not see yourself as that woman anymore.....the woman in all of your pictures is still the same to the rest of us.
Nancy: of all your posts, I like this one the best. It's the most insightful and thought provoking. Life has thrown you a major curve, but it has no doubt made you a better person, and you will continue to grow in a positive direction. This ordeal is transforming you, and when you've beaten the disease you'll look back upon it with a wisdom that few of us will ever possess.
I commend to you a wonderful book by Aushwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. Maybe you've read it, but if you haven't, I think it may really speak to you.
http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/0671023373/sr=1-1/qid=1161543044/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1670769-6759912?ie=UTF8&s=books
Rick Filkins
This is perhaps the most famous passage from Frankl's book. Frankl's wife died upon her arrival at Aushwitz with him, but he didn't know it becaue they had been separated. He thought of her often while he was imprisoned there, and thinking of her helped keep him alive.
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
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