Monday, October 20, 2008

Normal wish

The Husband is working from home today. Despite injunctions to "Pretend Daddy isn't really here," she just interrupted his work with a question. It was a very important question, you see.

"When cancer is over, can we go to the park?"

2 comments:

jbgrinch said...

how sweet and sad at the same time. I think it is well deserved, for her to bother dad at work.

Kristina said...

My fingers are itching to reply to your "no comment" post, but I am trying to honor your wish not to post.

I hope it's okay to say that I'm sending you as much love and compassion and goodwill as possible today, in particular because of that post, but just in general, too.

Instead of addressing that post (look how hard I'm trying...!), I will say this: isn't it wonderful that LW knows how special it is to go to the park? Isn't it wonderful that you can fulfill her wish? And the bittersweet that such wonder is mixed with such pain, such knowing.....it is incomprehensible, I think, how that wonder and pain live side by side so closely entangled together. I think I read your blog for that very reminder, that the pain doesn't eclipse the joy, even when it's trying.

I have found that on the days when fears of recurrence are absolutely too much to bear (and for me, it's all about motherhood: you lose sleep over the possibility of losing LW, and I lose sleep over Tessa losing her mother), I can not even think of the future, except in the most immediate sense. I grab hold of those tiny moments - pushing Tessa on a swing at the park, the sky blue above her. Or jumping in a pile of leaves. Or the taste of a really good dessert together. Or the feel of her body snuggled against me as we read a story. In that very present moment, I find some comfort, when the future is far too terrifying to contemplate, and it feels like the "what ifs" will destroy all of my hopes.

It doesn't cure. It doesn't fix things. But it does make things more bearable for me, if I can let go a bit and just live in the NOW, even when what I want is so much more.

Sending love and prayers.....and the hope that pretty soon you and LW will be wrapped up in her moment in the park.