Can We Talk
I have a friend who’s an author that I haven’t actually spoken to in years. We built a great website and cultural blog back in 1999 that’s still very popular today. Every year, I usually reach out and wish her a happy birthday through whatever social site is popular at the time. This year, it was twitter. After sending her happy birthday wishes, I noticed on her timeline, her refusal to mention the C word. I read a little more and found that her mother was dealing with cancer as well. I thought to myself how sad that was because as long as I’ve known her, she’s been able to make people laugh at her own misfortunes and observations of life and laugh right along with them. There was something about this though, that didn’t seem to be something she could laugh at. Because I was now going through a similar situation with my mom, I really wanted to reach out and talk to her. We’re both about the same age, we worked together through a very rewarding and stressful project and we’re both now dealing with our mothers having cancer that we thought was all gone.
I haven’t really been the talk about it type, but having someone else you know going through the same thing strangely made dealing with my mom’s situation seem easier. I don’t really understand how. Knowing that I’m not alone doesn’t change my mom’s prospects for survival. All it really means is that now I’m either going to share in someone else’s pain when it happens to them, or be happy and jealous at the same time when her mother beats it again (which for the record, I pray for just as much as I pray for my own mother’s survival.)
She’s now moving back to the east coast to be with her mother. I really want to take a trip to say hi and offer support. I met her mom once about 12 years ago. I doubt I’ll make the trip. It’s already an uneasy situation and I’ve been accused of being as quiet as death before. But I really want her to know that I’m there for her if she ever needs a friend.
Tags: Birthday, c word, dealing with cancer, happy birthday, laugh, misfortunes, mom, Talk
This entry was posted on Monday, January 3rd, 2011 at 11:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.