Cancer
You will notice that comments are disabled on this post, which is no accident. I write the following not as a request for sympathy (you will also see that this is buried beneath a couple of other posts), but due to the realization that writing about this, getting it out onto a medium, will relieve some of the stress that it has been causing in my mind. Two people I love very much are in trouble. First, my grandfather has cancer. He is the last grandparent I have left. The operation that is coming up will be the second time he has ever been in a hospital (the other time was for some minor elbow surgery). Unfortunately, the surgeon said that this is the oldest person he will ever attempt this surgery on. This type of colon cancer is aggressive, and the surgery chosen frequently ends with the person not ever having control of their bladder again. My aunt types medical transcripts, and has typed this type of surgery before; she said these usually end “not very well.” He has a 50% chance of living. Yesterday, the 24th, Christmas Eve Day, was his birthday, and the celebration was bittersweet … we may be missing him this time next year.
My mom has an irregular lump. I will spare you the details (and years later when I read this I will not be interested in them, either) but there is a 80% chance that it is not cancer. She will be having surgery to remove this before the end of the year. I have not let myself even consider the possibility that it is cancer. I simply can not imagine my mom having cancer; her having that disease is like me trying to drive a square peg through a round hole in my mind. All we have been doing is valuing our time together as of late, it has been a very close holiday, and we had a wonderful shopping trip. I actually succeeded in picking out a couple of articles of clothing (a cotton dressy blazer from Gap and purple shirt to go under it from Banana Republic) for my 4’11.75” 87lb mother - no mean feat, I might add.
It is strange yet heartening how the worst situations bring out the best in people. Our holidays might have been full of intense and petty arguments over inconsequential nothings had things not been thrown into a harsh and sharp perspective by the bright light of mortality. To look on the bright side yields this: “We enjoyed the holidays because we came to know how precious what we have is.” We all have been given gifts, we simply need to realize it.