I grew up hearing my mother speak of her father, my Grandpa Ray, very wistfully. Why wistfully? She lost him to cancer when she was five years old. She's always spoken of how she wishes she could have really known him and it's always felt so wrong to me that she wasn't able to.
Flash forward to my freshman year in high school. My mom's mother, my Grandma Ruby, was diagnosed with multiple types of cancer. I don't remember everything perfectly, perhaps because part of me doesn't want to. My mother, one of my heroes, went down to southern Oregon to take care of Grandma Ruby for months. Had to watch her die slowly. Because there was just nothing to be done, it had spread too fast. I remember driving down there with my daddy and my brother for the memorial... we stayed in Grandma's tiny house and all I could think was... I'll never hear Grandma sing again. She had this beautiful alto, smoky, bluesy.
Flash forward again to just a few years ago, or was it more? Have you ever noticed how time blurs when you get older? My paternal grandfather was diagnosed with throat cancer. He was very ill, went through all sorts of treatments and then they decided to take out his voice box to see if that would contain the cancer. It did and he's still alive today, but he'll never speak with his wonderful voice again. I'll never hear him tell me the story of my daddy climbing out the window when he was a teenager (and landing in Grandpa's waiting arms lol). Or about one of his many adventures traveling the world, the beauty of Paris... the gondolas in Venice... the chips in London. He loved to tell stories.
My father's brother died from a horrible tumor that wrapped around his spinal cord in early 2013
September of 2013 I lost my Grandma Suzy, she'd been fighting cancer for a very long time. I wrote a post all about her right after her passing, which you can see here: http://soulsfiredesigns.blogspot.com/2013/09/elephants-can-remember.html
As you can see... cancer has touched my life. Cancer doesn't care who you are, it doesn't care how old you are, how wealthy, how beautiful... it just hurts. Devastates. Kills. It's real, it's big, and it affects so many. So many. TOO many. I pray. I pray every day that we find a cure. For every cancer. So that is my story, of dealing with cancer. I'm sorry it's not more eloquent, writing this post has taken me weeks... because it brings back memories. Painful ones. But I will say that being touched by it has made me more aware of my own mortality in a way that I hope will help me embrace life. Because I don't want to miss a moment, for we never know when everything will change.
Here are my two pieces, please excuse the pictures, it has been raining and the light is awful.
Thank you SO much Lori for organizing this and Heather for creating these amazing beads. This has been a truly wonderful experience and I am so blessed to know you both!
Here are the blogs to hop around, I hope you will visit as many as you can, this is such an important issue and we'd all love your support!
