Life is hard. We all know that. As humans, we all have the same primitive needs, and as different and unique as we like to think we are (and we are, to some extent), we all face the same basic obstacles - longing for love, trying to make money to be financially secure, searching for happiness, living and dying.
I think knowing life is hard is a fundamental truth I have known since birth. I was born on the 12th day of February, way back in 1979, with a diaphragmatic hernia which had caused all of my insides to move into my chest cavity. The doctors had assured my family that I would not live as they rushed me to the closest hospital with a NICU unit to attempt a surgery they could only hope would serve as a "learning resource" for local doctors who had not seen infants born with a diaphragmatic hernia before. Obviously, my mom had just given birth, so she could not make the 40 minute trip to the next hospital with me in the ambulance, so she sent my grandmother. I can't say that I remember that trip to the Children's Hospital, or any of the days thereafter for the next few years, but I can say that on that day a bond was forever formed with my grandmother. She was my protector, my in case of emergency, my religious example, my therapist, my head cheerleader, my taxi when I was kid, my person who believed in me, my whole heart...my one person in the world that would do anything for me...and now she's gone.
Cancer is an ugly bitch.
From the date we took her into the hospital for what we thought was either a severe sinus infection causing her to throw up (what we thought was drainage) or a stomach bug of some sort, it took 7 days to get a cancer diagnosis. Linitis plastica. Stage 4 stomach cancer. No hope. The news that my grandmother was dying was literally that blunt and delivered by a hospitalist who was that flippant in his delivery of such a grave diagnosis to a patient and family. My grandmother, who at 72 years old, and only 8 days before had held a full-time job, just got back from a solo weekend trip to meet my mom in Fredericksburg to shop and buy peaches, had been on all kinds of vacations this summer, etc., was suddenly so sick she was going to die.
I can't imagine what it was like for her to hear the news and I regrettably admit that in that moment I was more concerned for the people in the room, my uncle, my daughter and myself, who immediately fell apart. As she had since my birth, instead of being there for her, and comforting her, my grandmother comforted me. She comforted all of us and with her typical "turn life's lemons into lemonade" attitude proclaimed that while she respected the doctors and all of their tests, "God had the last word and his will would be done, in his time, not theirs."
We were told she would have 6 to 8 months, at best, and that chemo would not heal her but would hopefully give her some quality of life in her last months. We all spent relentless, restless hours researching all we could on gastric cancer, linitis plastica, mortality rates, survival rates, treatment plans, searching for any morsel of hope we could conjure up. We tried our best to convince ourselves, and convince her, that people beat cancer every day - why not her?
"Why not her" is a question I will never be able to answer. I don't know why someone so sweet and good had a disease that took every last moment of her life and made it miserable. I don't know why, looking back now, we dismissed all of her minor complaints about stomach issues as 'drainage' or 'spicy food' or 'eating too late at night' - because looking back, there were a lot of them. I went through 2 years worth of text messages between her and me and around February of this year it reached a peak when I told her "it's not normal to have a stomach bug that lasts 2 weeks, GO TO THE DOCTOR." I don't know why she didn't listen to me. I don't know why I wasn't more insistent. I don't know why only 19 days after her diagnosis and only one round of chemo, she was gone. I just don't know.
I do know that watching someone you love die changes you forever. In those last few weeks, with her so sick, I went from being the cared-for, to the care-giver. It was there, in that hospital room's crappy chair, holding her hand for hours on end that I realized, I am an adult now. I know that seems like a bit of a delayed epiphany considering I'm a 35 year-old, college graduate, home-owning, gainfully employed, single parent, but hey - it takes some of us longer than others to get there. On paper, I've been an adult for a long time, but our family is so small, and we rely on each other so much, that I've felt safe and protected inside that family cocoon and now with the passing of our family's matriarch (my grandfather passed away 5 years ago) that safety is gone.
I don't know where I go from here. I do know that I am relying heavily on my faith to carry me through and that things will get better. I know this is all (unfortunately) part of the human experience and that sometimes life is hard. Most importantly, I know how I blessed I am to have had the love and example of a woman as wonderfully kind and godly as my grandmother was. I can only hope in the days as I move forward, and become the matriarch of my own little family, that I can make her proud by taking the hard things in life and making "the sweetest lemonade."
