I was talking with a dear friend today and realized that pre and post cancer is similar to mourning a death. There are no better words for us. Clark and I were different people prior to his cancer. We have had to mourn the loss of who we were, what our marriage was and begin to celebrate of rebirth of ourselves. It sounds strange.
Cancer rocked our world when Clark was first diagnosed . We did not know how much time we had, how well the treatment would go (remembering Clark's white blood count went down to 1 at one point). Our life with cancer was shaken, stirred and turned upside down and in the middle of all we were trying to be parents to our beautiful child.
In the last few months I have become friends with other moms (one mom has 4 kids and her husband had NHL, one mom is a widow whose husband died when she was 6 months pregnant with their first child and today I heard of a 29 married man who has stage 4 carcinoma and has a young child). My heart breaks for each of these families because I know easily it could have been us but in reality it could have been anyone of us.
Our lives are different post cancer treatment. We could not go through what we went through to be bitter, but to be more forgiving and more loving. Our love is different, more gentle at times but more important there is understanding. Understanding we are not alone there will always be God.
While Cancer knows no bounds, has no limits and does not discriminate, there is God's Love. God's love knows no bounds, no limits, does not discriminate and more importantly was there before the cancer and will be there after. There will always be God's love.
Of course you would mourn your life pre-cancer. It is a change that sticks with you. With everything else that it does (and doesn't) do, it strips away any assumption and leaves you always aware that anything can happen. A loss of innocence. Whether you let that turn you bitter and make you cling to the things you have or let it open your eyes and your heart is up to you.
ReplyDeleteYou may even find, at some point, that you mourn the time when you were in the fight. For all of the battle and the hardships, it probably had a way of pulling the three of you together and pushing out all things irrelevant. It is easier or even necessary to say no to obligations that don't bring you serious joy. You need to be there to spend the time and keep the illness exposure down. When you start to be comfortable enough post-treatment to find something taken for granted you will mourn in a weird way the closeness and the laser focus on your family unit. And rejoice in it at the same time.