Snapshots of a Mother’s Cancer Experience — Pt 2: A Perfect Day / Flash Forward

Do you know someone battling cancer (or who has a family member battling cancer)? We hope this weekly series will be a source of encouragement.

When I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in 2000, I came face-to-face with my own mortality—and learned some profound lessons that transformed my view of reality. I would never sign-up for my cancer experience, but neither would I trade away the treasures mined from it.

Above all, I learned to live with the awareness that we all really do have an impending, inescapable appointment awaiting us. We all have an appointment with God. No matter how busy or distracted we are, or how distant that appointment may seem, one telephone call can change everything.

My call came when I was a 40-year-old mother of two preschool children and a happily married wife. The following post is Part 2 in “Snapshots of a Mother’s Cancer Experience,” a series that chronicles my journey through diagnosis, surgery, and beyond. (You can find a chronological list of the previous Snapshots here.)

A PERFECT DAY
1991
Sunday, September 29

I sit upon a driftwood log beside Roger Casey Farrell with an open Bible on my lap. I look up from my reading to admire an awe inspiring sunset on Lake Michigan’s horizon. Whitecaps scamper onto the beach. The rich scents of fresh fish and wet sand mingle in the air.

Somehow, for this moment, I know that God inhabited this world in the life and body of Jesus…

for love…

…because He loves me.

Although my will accepted this truth six months ago, suddenly, in this moment, my heart possesses it. I’m overwhelmed. Tears christen my cheeks.

Roger and I started this Sunday together at a church service. Afterward, we returned to my house and Roger prepared brunch: French toast, my favorite, and the most interesting and delicious gourmet hash browns consisting of sweet potatoes, Idaho potatoes, and onions. Then he suggested we drive to the lake and rollerblade along the shore. We left my house in his black 1978 Trans Am and drove to his apartment to pick up his guitar.

At his apartment, I initiated a weighty discussion that could’ve easily derailed his plans. He listened patiently, responded tenderly, and ultimately steered me back into his car and brought us here.

Before we made our way to this beach, we donned roller blades and skated along Sheridan Road. I thought I recognized my uncle’s neighborhood and, though Roger hadn’t planned on socializing, he supported me when I tried to find my uncle’s house. We skated by a man sitting on his porch. I stopped and asked to borrow his phone book. When we looked up my uncle’s address and discovered that his house was further away than I’d thought, I abandoned the search.

Now, as the autumn sunlight fades, I start to shiver. Roger Casey strums his Ovation guitar, obviously composing. It’s getting cooler, and I hate the cold, but, uncharacteristically, I decide to cope with my discomfort silently until he finishes. I feel privileged to be present while he creates.

“That’s it,” he announces. “Want to hear?”

Of course I do! This song has lyrics, and as I listen to him sing I suddenly realize that he is proposing to me. How I’ve ached for this moment. When the last chord rings out and fades into the music of wind and waves, he waits.

I’m so stunned I forget to answer.

Then he’s asking, and I’m saying “yes, yes, and a thousand times YES!!!” and blowing my nose, and we’re hugging, and he grabs a crumpled brown paper bag half-buried in the sand beside the driftwood and I cringe to see him stick his hand into the bag as I imagine a crab with pinchers lives inside or, worse, a moldy sandwich…but instead he pulls out a palm-sized dark blue velvet box that holds an engagement ring which he tells me he’s had since last weekend when, instead of proposing to me as he’d planned, he helped my sister move…and now it’s my engagement ring…and I’m laughing and crying and praising my God…

It’s been a perfect day.

♥ ♥ ♥

FLASH FORWARD MORE THAN A DECADE
2002
Tuesday, January 8

Tonight when Roger practiced his guitar, he played a song that he wrote just after my first surgery. It’s an instrumental piece. Sweet; melancholy. It’s beautiful, really.

But sometimes it’s hard for me to hear. As music has the power to do, it takes me right back to that sick bed…

I see myself lying in our bed, desperately uncomfortable. There is a hole sliced above and to the right of my groin, directly into my bladder, out of which protrudes a catheter tube. The tube is looped and carefully taped to my thigh before it continues down the side of the bed, into a collection bag on the floor.

My husband is composing a new song. Although he started writing it before my cancer diagnosis, its mood eerily echoes mine; it has become the soundtrack to this current drama of sadness and suffering.

Roger is in the bedroom frequently…close to me physically, but far from me otherwise. Once our boys are asleep, he comes to work in his studio, which consists of a computer, keyboard, mixing board, and other assorted equipment that lines the wall across from the foot of our bed.

When I was well, we often worked side-by-side on our individual creative projects with little interaction, and it seemed quite natural. It never bothered me. I counted it a privilege to share space with him while he created. But now it is different.

I am so needy! And he is so distant.

What do I need?

I think I need to be out of pain! Relief. Healing, which is something that only God and time may provide. Human compassion. I need my mommy! Someone to wipe the tears from my eyes, to hug me, to say, “I’m so sorry you are going through this.” Someone to notice me. Someone to ask, “Can I get you anything? Is there any way I can make you more comfortable?”

Feeling isolated in the midst of suffering can make me bitter … or it can sensitize me to the silent suffering of those around me.

(Lord Jesus, please open my eyes!)