Yesterday afternoon at work I made a donation to the American Cancer Society for a couple of colleagues and myself. Someone we work with lost their father and they had asked in lieu of flowers for donations to ACS. We love him dearly so we gathered some money together to do this. And you know...it's the stupidest thing...but as I sat there on their website filling in all the information and deciding whether the donation should be general or for a specific type of cancer....I just felt the biggest rock in my stomach. I can go to the Cancer Center monthly and it's more or less o.k. but somehow being on that website just brought too much back.
Later in the evening I had an email from a friend with very bad news....again cancer related. Ernie and I talked, we cried a little and then we went about our evening. I couldn't fall asleep though. Ernie went up to bed and I sat at the computer by myself poking around uninterestedly. Then I cried again and I realized why I couldn't sleep. I gave up, poured a glass of wine and took it up to bed. I laid in the dark listening to Kane Welch Kaplin and then Rod Picott, sipping wine and talking to myself.
I feel wet and messy and bloody at times like that. It makes me think of the first week or so after I'd given birth to Leo. Everything is wet and messy. Your child leaks and poops and spits up and you find that you've been given back this body that doesn't feel like yours and it's wet and leaking and bleeding.
That's how thinking about cancer makes me feel.
