How do I begin this story? I’ve told it before. It doesn’t get easier.
I’ll start with a poem:
If I tell you
will you
fall to your knees
will you
like me
find your face
on the ground
because
so quickly
we go
from standing
walking
to this
In the Spring, my sister was diagnosed with something called Lewy Body Dementia. This term was a mystery, to her and to us, her family. For a few years she had become increasingly forgetful, was experiencing lots of anxiety and just wasn’t herself. She was 56.
In the Summer, mom was told she had an incurable lung disease. She was 76.
And from a journal entry dated October 8th: “Something is very wrong in my body and I don’t know what it is.” I was 47. A few days later: “Two days after the biopsy. News comes. Not good news. Malignant. The word of my past is here again. In me.”
I will never forget telling my parents. Returning home I wrote: “Mom bit her lip to stem the tears…dad took the news like a physical blow.”
We, my family, had no idea what the next handful of years would bring, how excruciating it would all be. Maybe it’s a type of grace, the not knowing.
For me, it was a time of being stripped bare. Becoming raw. As a family, we grew close out of necessity and fear.
On December 13th, 2016, mom’s suffering ended.
On June 9th, 2017, I kissed my sister’s gaunt cheek for the final time.
I still frequently find myself wondering how we, the ones who remain, survived. Courage?
Another journal entry : ” I’m not sure what courage is. Is this it? This feels like No Choice. Does walking into it, facing it, make me courageous?”
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