"It's over now," they wispered. "She's in a better place."
How could it be, she thought, it just cannot be. Tears began to flow from her tired eyes.
Time stopped for that one moment, and everything had changed.
"Close your eyes," they said. "And breathe."
She had seen many things in her life, many devastating things, but none as heart wrenching as what she saw that day at the hospital- someone she loved being beaten down slowly, and defeated by something completely and utterly out of her control.
She sat in the waiting room, this girl who was scared and uneasy of the sight she was about to see. It couldn’t be any worse, she thought, than the display in the waiting room- sick people young and old in wheel chairs; gaunt, unhappy faces filled the room. Sorrow. That is what she felt, nothing else. Her mother called her name, and she went, but walked slowly in fear of what she would see. There she went through giant hospital wing doors painted a light brown color. She was greeted by cheerful faces, but the mood was anything but that. This wing of the hospital was dedicated solely to chemotherapy. Each room set up the same- a big chair or a bed with a window view, it was a typical hospital room if she ever saw one. She became nervous. It was a feeling she knew well, a feeling that brought to her unsettling memories of the death of her grandmother, a loss that is still to this day difficult for her to talk about. Breathe, she thought, and walk. The hallway seemed endless, but in reality it was only a few steps. She finally reached the room at the end of the hall, and she saw her, her gaunt face, her defeated spirit, the very image she had been dreading.
Her aunt, at the age of 41, a young age at that, has been fighting cancer for some time now. The doctors don’t know exactly what kind of cancer it is, for is has metastasized at an alarming rate, a rate that has left her in a state of, well, disbelief. She is half the size she used to be and wears a wig, thanks to the dosages of chemo that have left her bald. Her face and body, gaunt; her mind is in another world, a world that has been altered by drugs to numb her pain, her sorrow, her reality.
She is the mother of two young boys, one three, the other seven. She loves them, but does not know how to say goodbye to them. She refuses to let go just yet. She’s a fighter. But how does she fight something that is completely eating her inside? She does not know, but she is trying, trying for her family. She is not only a mother, but a sister, a wife, an aunt, a godmother, a friend. She cannot say goodbye. It is not an option. There is too much of her life left to live. She must see the day her children graduate high school, experience college, and all the growing up children do that gives happiness to mothers, and she cannot miss that.
It seems like yesterday when she was diagnosed with this terrible sickness. It was Easter. And it seemed that from April to now, it has been a rollercoaster spiraling downward. The chemo works and doesn’t work. The cancer spreads, then shrinks. Fate is a tricky wonder, with all its twists and turns, for it is never certain.
This girl, this helpless girl who looks in from the outside and tries to make sense of this discerning reality that feels like a nightmare, but cannot, what is she to do? It pains her to see a woman she loves and admires being beaten down by something so out of her control. She weeps. But weeping will not alleviate the pain in her heart. A family, once so carefree and happy, is being torn apart with grief.
It had been three years since her sick aunt had reconnected with her two other sisters. After a falling-out, it was sickness, the very thing that tore them apart, that brought them together again. It was as if nothing happened. They needed each other, and that was all that seemed to matter. No petty argument or misunderstanding was to leave one sister to abandon the others, for they are kin. Like in combat, no soldier is left behind, in this family; no sister is left on the frontlines alone to battle this disease that plagues them.
