Today would have been my friend Carol’s birthday and we would have taken a long walk together up at Inspiration Point and then parted. Always sadly for she was battling breast cancer. This piece was written during one of her remissions. At the time she shared it with me, I thought it too tainted by anger because I really didn’t understand. I still don’t but it’s so beautifully written, I thought in honor of her birthday, it should be shared.

WHEN I TOLD MY FAMILY I had cancer, my Aunt Laney was the only one who wasn’t shocked. I was the healthy one of the family, the one who cycled up mountains, went trekking in strange places and ate my fruits and vegetables. But my aunt had had a dream.
“What was it?” I asked. She hesitated, then pronounced the word sick—carefully, as if it saying it aloud might choke her, and making me understand that in her dream, I had died.
Well, I did not want to say the dastardly word aloud anymore than she did. So we moved on, away from the word death in the superstitious way that cancer teaches; bumbling, stumbling and blathering our way toward anything that might offer safer ground. I was a rank newbie but learning fast—sorting through the lore, myth, statistics, options, and attitudes—still believing that I was somehow going to take charge of the situation. And stay positive!
In the following months I learned more. Much more. I was taught to look upon the results of deforming surgery as “my health,” then sent on my merry way to the chemo lounge, where I learned what it feels like to be systemically and methodically poisoned for a period of four months. These were brutal experiences that rendered me, on most days, psychically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically helpless. Incapable of normal conversation, I rarely spoke to anyone but my husband (who couldn’t talk either) and a few select family members. On one of my good days, my aunt called to say she had been to a Cancer Walk, and had lit a candle for me. I pictured something tall, tapered and elegant, shedding light in the darkened alcove of a church with stained glass windows. I was just beginning to smell the incense when she explained that the Cancer Walk had been held at the local high school stadium of her small rural town, and that instead of flickering in a quiet alcove, the candles had lined a quarter mile track normally used for sports. There were thousands of them, each one burning inside a paper bag with someone’s name handwritten on it. On one of those bags—one among the thousands—my aunt had written my name.
After that, her sister, an ex-nun, recruited a whole convent of Dominicans to pray masses for me.
“Thank you,” I said to my Aunt. “Thank you so much.” At least I think that’s what I said. My mouth was dry and my mind, slipping in and out of the purple-y-pink muck of Chemo Land. If my brain had been working better, I might have said that candles represent hope, and that I was lucky to have a whole convent of nuns on my side. But the thick-tongued “thank you” was all I could muster.
Eventually, my fog-swamped brain became curious about the practice of lighting candles in paper bags and I went online to find out more. More is a pathetically inadequate word for the plethora of Cancer Walk websites and ceremonies you can find online. They are as ubiquitous as blockbuster movies, replete with colorful pictures and bizarrely festive narratives. Here’s how a Cancer Walk works: First you have the Survivors, walking around the track as best they can—hatted, handkerchief’d, wigged, bald, lash-less, brow-less and lucky to be alive. Next come family members and friends, supporting and applauding the courage and stamina of their Survivors. The grand finale is a ceremony of candles, each one set aflame within the confines of a white paper bag. The paper bags struck me as weird—and a serious a fire hazard, but then I figured they probably had some special Cancer Fire Trucks parked nearby, and far be it from me to spoil the jolly times.

However, then I learned that paper bags are “remembrances” of “those who had lost the battle,” people who were “no longer surviving”—which is to say, dead—and the jolly times were over.
Did my aunt know something I didn’t? Something I refused to admit? Because anyone can see that at a Cancer Walk, there are always a lot more paper bags than walkers. So maybe those masses had been Requiem Masses, and I was … now wait a minute … From somewhere in the murk of my drug-riddled body, a weedy little voice began to wail: I am not dead. Not dead. Please do not let me be dead.
Couldn’t they see how hard I was working at all this? Hadn’t they noticed all the things I had bargained off, trading body parts and abilities for the mere possibility of regaining my health? And now you’re going to tell me that I died anyway, so messed up on drugs that I didn’t even notice? No. Because if that’s the way it is, I can chuck this positive attitude in a millisecond, baby, and get rip roaring mad— volcanically angry in a way heretofore unexpressed by person, animal, thing, inanimate, living, dead.

[From here she goes into a rant about the medical establishment which I’m happy to share. It’s well researched but written in anger.]

People who have cancer live in a different world than those who do not. It is a Little Shop of Horrors that none of us ever intended to visit; the kind of place that renders us helplessness with statistics we cannot change, and sucks us into depressing forms of logic. If 40,000 women must die of breast cancer this year, and I pray to get well, am I asking another to die in my place?
And we know that when we die, we must be shushed from the minds of Survivors and cancer innocents alike. Because thinking about all those dead people—perhaps even imagining over a half million bodies in one big pile, converging in some gigantic encampment like penguins flocking to the South Pole in a massive act of death instead of mating—is not something anyone can sustain for very long.
Recently, though, I had to thank my aunt again. Because now that I made it through the treatments, thereby immediately qualifying myself for promotion to the status of Survivor, I realize that the candle and the masses were indeed remembrances. The old me—that energetic person with the athletic body and the fearless mind—is dead. I have no choice now but to bury her, grieve her and try to move on, to whatever destiny has in store for this new Survivor-me. She is a woman I do not yet know, or believe in. But I will give her everything I possibly can, and do my best with whatever she can give me in return.
So thank you, Aunt, for the masses and the candle—I understand that I am but a humble glimmer, one among millions, all hoping for the chance to live a healthy life. And I understand that, while my own experiences were horrible, others suffer more. Their souls visit me as I fall asleep; so debilitated, or so dead, they can no longer speak for themselves. I wrote this for them.

My son was fourteen when we moved into this house. He was a shy and awkward fourteen year old, tall and skinny … not thin … skinny. And he wore braces. I had just married a man who was the complete opposite of his father. Husband Number One wore tailored suits and monogrammed shirts and if he needed to hang a picture, he hired someone to do it for him. The only time Joel ever wore a suit and tie was to give his daughters away and that’s only because they insisted. And he owns about every sort of power tool you can buy.

We’d only been in the house for a year when I suggested that a semi-secluded flat patch in our backyard would make an excellent spot for a tea garden. I pictured a small, perhaps prefab, writing shed and a Koi pond. Nothing special; just a place to escape to. And then my father got involved. He had just retired from teaching mechanical engineering and needed a project. I suspect he also wanted to get to know my husband a bit better.

My son had been having a hard time finding a job for that summer and so Joel put him to work. First, he cleared the existing patch of weeds and bushes and then he rebuilt a crumbling retaining wall. Meanwhile my father began visiting with his sketches in hand.

First came the foundation. I tried to help by dragging concrete bags down the hill … but my primary responsibility was to keep my shopaholic step-mom busy. My father absolutely despised shopping.

By the end of that first summer Cameron was still a skinny lad but he had started to buff up. He entered the next year of school with curly, sun-bleached hair and a surfer’s tan. Needless to say, he actually began to have fun at school.

Because we were both still working, the tea house took over three years to finish. The framework and roof took perhaps the longest time.

We finally finished the summer that my son left for college. By then he knew enough about construction to get a job at a hardware store. There he quickly became the go-to expert on Simpson Strong Ties which made him very proud. He also starting spending his summers working for Habitat for Humanity.

The other day I found my father’s original sketches and sent them out to Cameron. He and his wife both work in downtown Manhattan but they’ve bought a piece of property two hours north of the city where they hope to build a house. Like the tea house, I imagine theirs will be a long labor of love. At least, I hope so.

This post is part of Hugh’s News and Views WordlessWednesday event.

For all my friends who are quilt artists! Enjoy!

Today, I walked 17,000 steps and climbed Kilimanjaro. And it was all done indoors. How? Why? Tomorow and Sunday the quilt group the Textiliste belongs to hosts their bi-annual exhibition. Long time readers may recall they held a special last year, as a What did you do during Covid themed show, but this was back […]

Being Blown Away — TanGental

A couple of days ago I complained that WordPress had eaten my post but not the images I’d uploaded for the post.

Many of you were nice enough to try to shed some light on what might have happened.

• Hugh, from Hugh’s News and Views, suggested that the post was in quarantine pending a review by WordPress. Hugh’s a brilliant guy who knows just about everything about blogging but I didn’t write anything nasty enough to be censored. However, I checked and guess what? What he meant (which I misinterpreted) is that, if your site has been infected by malware, it will be quarantined until the malware is snuffed. Generally you will receive an email if this happens but not always. Especially if you have multiple email addresses like I do. So, thanks once again Hugh!
• A few bloggers suggested that I may not have saved the post before publishing it. That could well have been true.
• Yvonne at Priorhouse told me to turn on two factor log in asap. An excellent idea!
• Anon, blogging over at Anonymole – apocryphal alligators, suggested that I had two versions of the post open and saved the wrong draft. Also possible. I’m generally doing two things at once.

But instead of guessing, I have put a question into the Happiness Engineers. Thanks everyone for your help!

Okay guys, I’ve saved this post three times! So I’ll add one last thing – an image gallery of my friend’s artwork for your amusement. My favorite collage is Pep up your parts! What do you think it was an ad for?

Pressing publish and hoping I’m not sending y’all a blank post.

Today’s another hot day here in Northern California. It won’t be as hot as earlier this week, the weatherman claims, but it’s already 98 degrees (F). So do I believe him? We’ll see.

But I did get out early enough to take a few Thursday doors snaps – the doors to this utility box are on the other side.

But these are the doors for this utility box. Check out other doors at Dan Antion’s place!

Meanwhile I’ve been going through a huge pile of home improvement books that I found stuffed in a cabinet we rarely use. Most of them were published by Reader’s Digest, Sunset Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens and Time/Life books back in their heydays (fifty years ago). They cover just about anything you’d need to know to build and maintain a house (and garden.) Of course, changing light bulbs these days is a struggle for us. So they won’t be going back in the cabinet. I’m not sure anyone will want a book on solar heating and cooling that was published in 1978. But I doubt the basics of electricity and plumbing have changed that much.

I did find an interesting article on installing a deer proof fence.

It turns out that deer shy away from baffles (see lower left of image). So if you don’t want deer in your yard, just build a maze! There’s another interesting idea for gopher proofing a yard. Let me know if you’d like me to post it.

The heat has done in Penito. Alas.

Whelp, it looks like old Charlie will finally get to be the king. Sigh, for the next several days, I’m sure it’s all we’ll hear about.