It takes a village

My mom’s birthday is today, and I truly have no words for how grateful I am for her.

Cancer is a solitary journey - the treatments break you down to a shell of yourself, it’s exhausting to see people, do things, and exist. But you also can’t do it alone - you need someone to help you live. And since I learned of my diagnosis in February, aside from one day when I thought I was strong enough to be on my own and promptly ended up in the ER, she has been glued to my side.

She’s been a herculean nurse - my journey thus far hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination, and I don’t even want to picture a world where I went through this without her. Had I gone with an earlier diagnosis and a different course without her there to question, I likely would have bled to death a few weeks ago. Her advocacy quite literally saved my life.

She's been my brain when chemo fog made thinking impossible, my legs when I was too weak to stand, my arms when I couldn't lift myself, my ears when appointments blurred together. She's been everything to enable me to dissociate and let the horrors of the cancer treatment process run their course. It's a gift I wish for every cancer patient.

It’s maybe surprising to hear, but because of this, I haven’t processed that I have cancer to an extent that would frankly be unhelpful now. I am unconcerned about the things I’ve missed, how much my life has changed, how much I have changed. My ego is out of the equation. I’m not holding onto my past self. I am not angry that this is happening to me, but I am not trying to hold up a happy face either. I am just a body, a meat sack. My job is to eat, breathe, sleep, and heal. And she makes this possible.

She says every day, “There is nothing more important than being here.” It’s in response to friends who have tried to give her a break but more importantly, to me as a reminder that there is nothing else for me to focus on right now but health. It’s a daily reminder to be in the present moment, to be here. It’s created our rhythm, our marching orders, our war cry. And in a strange way, for the first time in years, I’ve found peace. I’ve fully relaxed.

When we were younger, my brother wrote a poem about my mother being like a hawk. And how grateful I am that she is. She’s beyond brilliant, misses no details, and goes to the end of the earth for those she loves.

She’s always been my idol - amongst other things, my golf buddy, my adventure buddy, and the person who can reliably always make me laugh in every circumstance (even, as it turns out, in the direst of moments). I have no words to articulate how unbelievably lucky I feel.

I wouldn’t wish cancer or this journey on anyone, but I will say this: going through it with my mom by my side has been the greatest gift of all.