I'll be missing you

20 years ago this month, my dad was diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer. He was asymptotic, in fact he thought he was having a heart attack from shoveling snow during a NJ storm. In reality it was the tumor pressing on his diaphragm. He wasn't old enough to get screened, lived a very healthy lifestyle and did all the right things concerning health.
He was given a shelf life of 2 years by the oncologists & specialists. He didn't live to see me get married or meet his grandson, who I know he'd love and teach him all about Monty Python & Dr Who.
He's been off the mortal plain for almost 18 years. I still want to pick up the phone & call him. I still find the perfect gifts for him each December. He'd love the popularity of Dr Who & Downton Abby.
I'm purple because I miss my dad.

A few years after my dad died, my beloved father in law was diagnosed with the very same colon cancer my dad had. His was caught earlier thanks to screening. He had surgery and treatment and was cancer free for several years. However, he passed away in 2004 after things metastasized. He, like my dad was an accountant. We are all numbers junkies! I loved going to Trenton Thunder games with him, and listening to The Big Man & he talking Yankees & politics. 

Funeral Blues by Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Cancer sucks.

Unforgiven

I do not make it a habit to respond to other people’s blog posts on my own blog, but today that habit ceases.


At Lisa Adams’ blog, she discusses a woman who did not tell her children she had cancer. Or a double mastectomy. Or underwent chemotherapy.

Wow.

How can you keep a secret like that and still earn the trust of your children? They rely on us to tell the truth about their lives, their family, themselves. By lying to them about cancer, no matter how well intentioned, can bring about a whole host of nasty consequences.

In my own life, I have a tale of two families that faced a grim cancer diagnosis. One was my own family, the other some neighbors. Both my stepfather and the mother of this family were diagnosed with inoperable cancers within a few months of each other. At the time, their youngest children were both 4. My dad had colon cancer that had already mestatized by the time of diagnosis; it was the same kind of colon cancer that Katie Couric’s husband had-they were both the same age and battling it at the same time-and died within weeks of each other. The other mom, Sandy, had an inoperable brain tumor that slowly robbed her of function and cognition.

My parents made a definitive choice: they were going to be open and upfront about the cancer and not hide anything from the Princess. She deserved the truth, and despite how bad it was, she deserved to make the most of the precious little time she had left with her dad.

Sandy and her family hid her disease from her children. She went out of town for treatment. They never saw her change from the chemo-the bloat, the baldness, the sickness from it all. It was all well intentioned, but the fact that they didn’t think the kids should stay in the kitchen and deal with the heat, undermined in my opinion, their family. I really didn’t know them outside of the fact that they were my parents’ neighbors, and that the Princess and this other little boy were the same age and went to the same school. I don’t know much about how the family coped with the disease and what lead to what I think is the ultimate betrayal by a parent.

They never got to say good bye to their mother.

As time has marched on, I don’t know what happened to those kids. I only hope that they have grown up and become loving, caring adults. I hope that they have forgiven their parents for their decisions and that they have reconciled themselves to their childhood.