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Tomorrow is my very last day of radiation. It'll be the 30th session. I had a lumpectomy on July 26 and start radiation on October 10. After this, I make the rounds of my doctors again (surgical breast oncologist, oncologist, radiation oncologist) and at some point, start taking tamoxifen.
Yesterday, I told my husband I'm ready for this year to be over and am hoping next year is better. He agreed, and said something about how his Chinese horoscope said it would be a really bad year. At first I thought, "Well, it wasn't really a bad year for YOU." But of course cancer happens to families, in some ways. Still, I don't think of this as the worst year ever. Maybe if it had been worse, if I'd had chemo too, or it had affected other areas of my life more than it did...I don't know, I just don't think of it as horrible. Not nearly as horrible as losing my daughter.
I realized that while I initially seek out those who are going through the same thing, I don't want to limit myself to just being with and talking to those people. When my daughter first died, I did seek out grief groups, other mothers who'd lost children, wanting to know that I wasn't the only one experiencing this. I think that comes from a desire to know others have lived through it, and wanting to know how. I told one mom, seeing her on the path ahead of me makes it a bit easier for me to keep walking it.
The thing is, I also need to look around and see others, people on different paths, and maybe to step onto those paths once in a while. After experiencing all of the things associated with breast cancer, the same seems to be true of another misfortune. I don't want to live in grief, or pain, or any of the other negatives. There are some who experience tragedy and continue to live in it forever. I don't want to, and maybe that's why I seek out others.
A friend asked me, shortly after my daughter died, whether I would feel more comfortable in a group of others who'd lost children. I told her that while I did need that sometimes, I also needed others because I didn't always want to be reminded of that. Ten months after my daughter's death, a friend from college, who I hadn't seen since I was pregnant with my firstborn, came to visit. His timing was perfect. Something about his appearance, his very presence, was comforting. He was the one who suggested I start this blog.
One of my old friends from high school said she'd read a study, something about how we have a desire to reconnect with those who knew us before...before we became the mother who lost a child, the divorced single mom, the breast cancer survivor, the mom of 5 children...whoever we are now. I saw a group of friends from high school recently, and while they know of these things that have happened to me, I somehow feel like their perspective of me is different than those whom I've met more recently. I like having all those different pairs of eyes look at me, see me in different ways.
I never try to escape or hide from the facts--I did lose my daughter, it sucks. I have breast cancer, and that sucks too. These will always be my realities. I'm also a mom of two young children. I'm a runner (well, not this month, but hopefully soon), a writer, a wife, and numerous other things. I want to be all of these, and not lose myself in the tragedies. Isolating myself, either completely or with others who are hiding in grief, would, I feel, prevent me from being anything but a grieving mother.
I looked recently at pictures of myself from the year after my daughter died. I won't lie, I look like hell. People asked at the time why I allowed others to take pictures. My second daughter was a baby, and that was her first year of life. I didn't want her to wonder why no one ever took pictures of us. She'll understand (I hope) someday why I looked so horrible, and why I let people take pictures anyway. And she'll also know that while I was miserable at first, eventually I moved forward.
