01/05/2023 – J-Dub's Grin and Bear It

My niece just had her first baby, a beautiful boy. Today is her birthday turning 33. I turned 33 shortly after Lulu was born. Doing quick math, my niece & I are both born six days & 33 years from the blessing of our respective child’s birth. That’s a pleasant thought.

I’m over thinking whether I should give my condolence on the first annual anniversary of a passing of a loved one. I stop short for many reasons, none all that good. While we share DNA, we are truly strangers, at best only acquaintances but truthfully not even that. All one sided & made up in my mind.

In general, people don’t want to “pick at the scab” which makes saying nothing the easy choice. Speaking only for myself, the silence hurts more than talking about your deceased loved one. Some days all I want to do is talk about Jimbo Pete, or my mom, or dad, my grandmas, or aunts, uncles, cousins … you get the drift. Keep their memory alive. Decisions, decisions. The only way to reach this person is email & my one & only prior email went unanswered. Maybe I just send my sympathies regardless without expectation. For we never know what little acts of kindness might do.

Alrighty! Done. I talked myself into it.

As always, more to come.

Linda is back at the helm & Lauren supplies the word of the day. Your prompt for JusJoJan January 5th 2023, is “cancer.” Use the word “cancer” any way you’d like. Have fun writing! Visit Lauren’s blog to read her post and say hello. HERE are the rules & ping back.

Cancer sucks! I wish I didn’t have as much knowledge about cancer as I do. Thank goodness & knock on wood that my knowledge is not firsthand. My earliest memory is of my brother & I scampering around the bed in my parent’s room, knocking over a green oxygen tank & getting in trouble. The year was 1966. The treatment was rudimentary compared to now. Of course this might be one of those memories where there is revisionist history but the story was told so many times it became real. Jilly & Paul almost blew the house up when that tank toppled over and rolled across the hardwood floor! I mean how would I know if that really happened? I was only two when Wesley died. Lung cancer.

I was in 2nd grade, 1971 I think, when my mom had breast cancer, mastectomy of her left breast. I was in 4th grade when she had a reoccurrence in her right breast. She told her doctors she’d rather die than have another mastectomy. That time she had a lumpectomy, radiation, and some sort of precursore to chemo. She survived & was considered cured for 25 years. She passed away when I was 33 from cancer of unknown origin. By the time they found the cause of her illness, cancer was everywhere in her body, deep into her bones. They think maybe cervical to start but since there wasn’t a treatment option, they didn’t confirm. Lulu was only 5 weeks old when mom died. Those were some bittersweet days.

My dad had a bout with colon cancer. They removed the cancer with enough healthy colon left that he did not require a bag. He lived to 90 & died from a brain aneurysm. Fortunately not cancer.

In October 1987, my Mamaw passed from liver cancer. She took OTC stomach meds for years & always carried around Tums. She predicted her eventual demise since stomach cancer ran in her family. Her cancer was found through exploratory surgery for her life long. gastrointestinal issues. Dr. Franklin closed her back up & said “we will make her as comfortable as we can in her remaining days”. Those days, lasted 3 months & were torture for her. We stood witness. Even sedated, her pain was ever present. The bright spot is as we were planning her funeral, I found out I was pregnant with Pony. I swear he has her spirit! She never met her little man but we made sure he knew about her.

We’ve also lost brothers-in-laws, sister-in-law, cousins, & friends to the dreaded C word. A true everyone knows someone who knows someone experience. But we’ve known others, two nieces, cousins, & friends who have survived! Those in the medical community are making ground breaking strides in cancer research (varies depending on the cancer) & there is always hope for a cure. If only, … wouldn’t that be amazing.

As always, more to come.