Mom, Tracy, Laura, Rosemary and Now Diane, You Are My Heroes

Yesterday, we completed yet another of the annual Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Walks. These walks always make me feel like I have a piece of my mother right beside me. I feel her presence. I feel connected to thousands of people I do not know. It's weird how I can have a conversation with someone I have never met before, and probably will never see again. How we can get to the 'nitty gritty' of breast cancer and not bat an eye. Here it seems normal. I mean, doesn't everyone talk about the effects of chemotherapy or how awesome a wig so-and-so has? Yah, I didn't think so, but among these people it is. Sad, but true.

This year was so much different for me than last year. I felt like I was in a better place. On the way to the race, I shed a few tears. Remembering my mom and her awful battle with the disease always brings me to tears. However, my SIL and I talked about mundane things like home improvement projects while we were walking. Last year, I walked quietly talking it all in. I had just had the Tot a few months prior, and the sorrow about my mother never meeting him was with me. I was only beginning to gain a hold on the PPD demon that had struck my life. The pain I felt over losing my mother was still raw. I had never dealt with it before I got pregnant with the Tot. I foolishly assumed that his birth would take away the grief, the pain, that was losing my mother. She was gone only 2 weeks when I went back to the RE to talk about our 'game plan for baby #2'. And she was gone only 2 months when I started trying to have the Tot. I learned something that month. Clomid and grief, while raising a nine month old baby in the midst, well, they do not mix at all. So when you hear about facing your grief. Do it. Because it really is true that you can't go around your grief, you have to go through it. Oh, and if you try to take a nice little short-cut like I did....you may end up in a worse place than where you started. There are no short-cuts.

This race I did not constantly see my mom in pain. I did not see the room she had her chemo. in, in my head. I did not see her in her final days. I still don't understand God's purpose for this, but I have accepted that it happened and there had to have been a reason for it. What I did see was my mother back in 2000 at the Race for the Cure. I saw her in her pink survivor's shirt and hat. I saw her in the 'Survivor's' picture. I saw the pride on her face, the energy in her step, the strength in her body. I like thinking of her that way. I like seeing all of the women, and men, who have fought this disease and won. I like to see those people affected by this dreadful disease full of determination and fight. It is at times like these that I see where true strength lies. True strength isn't only on the exterior. Oh, no. It is that hardened determination to fight a disease that can, and does, kill. To fight it until you have nothing left. So Mom, Tracy, Laura, Rosemary and sadly now my friend Diane, you are my heroes. Even though you feared cancer and its side effects, you went on and fought with all you had. You never gave up. And even though cancer took my mom's life, the way she fought showed me how to fight. You fight until you can fight no more, and hopefully you are able to kick cancer's ass.