I got a message today that someone in my Tuesday cancer support group had passed away in mid-December.
Just weeks before, she used a walker to sit down on the couch next to me, chatted as normal. She didn’t appear on her death bed...and yet, now she’s dead. I feel weird how cancer...death can grip someone so quickly and quietly as without warning. I’ll never be prepared.
On New Year’s Eve, John and I took the now rare occasion to step out together. To celebrate a new...hopefully better year. To celebrate us and the day we met 6 years ago by chance. To laugh. To eat mini meatballs and crab cakes on toothpicks. To sip champagne and ring in what just has to be a better year than the last two, certainly.
The ball dropped. The glasses clanked. The song played. Everyone kissed.
Then I sobbed in the middle of the dance floor, praying my wig would hid the tears falling to the ground while John held me. I felt so stupid.
I cried for my friends who didn’t make it out of 2018. I cried for my swollen ankles and balding head and bulging, tumor filled gut. I cried for the pain I cause my husband and my family.
But most of all I cried for me. Is this my last NYE? Will I make it out of 2019? Is this the last year of my life?
Even surrounded by love, cancer will take you and tear you apart and drain you to the last drop of your physical and mental self. And then you will be gone. Your name in an email to your support group, asking “should we send a card of condolence?”.
And lastly, I cried because of you, Samantha, my dear, GIST sister. You died in late October. I didn’t even know how sick you were.
I’ve cried so many times for you since then. So many things remind me of you, Sam.
A whisper. Gone. Another friend. Gone.
Free of pain? At peace? I don’t buy it. God is cruel (if there even is a God?!).
And I’m still here suffering.
I remain devastatingly heart broken to have my dearest friend, my very first friend, in the GIST community gone so young. She had so much to offer the world and once again, taken far too soon with too many years of prior suffering.
Sam and I had a special connection from the very first time we chatted, although physically far apart. She was the very first person I opened up to about my diagnosis when I couldn’t physically bring myself to speak about it to my own friends and family. She encouraged me to be part of the community, to write my blog, to show and speak the realities about being young and having terminal cancer.
I miss her so much everyday even though months have gone by. Every time someone I know dies of cancer, I think back to her. My heart is still broken.
I can’t mend my heart anymore. It’s too hard.
It’s broken for her. It’s broken for me. It’s broken for my other young GIST friends and those who aren’t so young as well. The struggling and suffering is unfathomable every single day.
How can I begin to even deal with this pain when everyday is more shit? More indication that yes, you do have cancer. Yes, there is no treatment. Yes, it will kill you...but when or where? That’s the surprise.
Here’s to hoping 2019 is a better year for real....although, I have to say, if the end of 2018 is any indication of 2019’s quality...the world can keep its shitty new year to itself.
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