That’s what she said on the other end of the phone line today. My pacing around the living room came to a halt. I had to process the fact that her cancer was… is… spreading. I had to accept that reality is a dark, greedy thing and that riding on the high of her being a miracle case may have been a stupid thing to do. As my world slowly began to spiral out in the eternity that was actually only a second, she continued speaking. Her words positive. The pain she was feeling is her body trying to heal, she tells me. I cheerfully agree, while my stomach sours and my broken heart splashes into its abyss.
Who is this woman to me? She is one of my best friends. Sometimes a sister. Sometimes a mother. Always a cheerleader. Always the being of light that finds me when I’m plunged in darkness with no belief I’ll make it out. But formally, we entered this timeline as aunt and niece.
In the same conversation, she asks me if I want to go with her to see her daughter (my cousin), who has just started beauty school and needs models to practice waxing. My hands run across the surface of my body searching for hair that I’d allow family to wax. My eyebrows would be too big of a gamble, my legs and armpits could use it, but that sounds too painful, my lip? My little lady ‘stache? Sure, why not.
I pick her up. She is still beautiful - her playful eyes twinkling- but her clothes are beginning to hang on her. It’s crazy because just a couple of months ago, she said she’d like to lose five pounds. Now she’s saying she wants to gain weight.
I remember laughing when she said she wanted to lose five pounds. And I laugh because I have an extra 20-40 on me at all times, it seems. Except, for once every couple of years, I get super fit for a few months before inevitably letting hubris tell me it’s okay to take a rest day. Until the rest day is another six months in a row.
Ah, back to that silly five pounds she wants to lose. Will that ever be a possible goal again? Or am I going to have to pray for it? Am I going to have to drop to my knees so hard that my flesh breaks open and scream so loud to God & the Universe that my voice becomes hoarse just so that she gets back to the point of ever wanting to lose 5 pounds once more?
Who is my aunt? Well, she’s somebody. At least to me. Who am I? Maybe a nobody to you, but a somebody to her. And that’s all that matters.
She was the youngest daughter of a good man & small-town cop ( I promise you this can exist, at least in my Grandpa), and she grew up as he and her strikingly beautiful but OCD mother had an ugly divorce, while the whole town knew about it. She was born athletic. Rebellious. Playful. Curious. She could party and did, but upon graduation, she signed up for the Navy. Her rebellion did not die down in the Navy. But for every time the punishment was exercise, she would giggle through it. So what i’m telling you is that she’s superhuman.
My aunt is the mascot for the people who get cancer, and ANYONE who learns about her would say “Well that doesn’t make ANY sense.” - I’m talking, she eats clean, she doesn’t smoke, and isn’t an alcoholic, she runs miles and miles daily. She has the energy and stamina of people decades younger. She has a positive mindset. She’s spiritual. She’s good. But most importantly.... she’s everything to me. Isn’t that enough?
Around 2020, she started having weird food allergies. She coped and moved forward with it with good spirits, despite having to cut out a bunch of food she loved. Then in 2022 the weight loss and an inability to use the bathroom. And after a colonoscopy - just like that - Stage IV colorectal cancer. 12% chance to live with palliative care recommended by our brilliant US Western medicine ass doctors.
Jesus. Christ. Oh. Fuck.
She chose to do immunotherapy in Mexico. But she still needed chemo pills occasionally. And surgeries. They cut so much of her guts out. She uses bags and catheters to use the bathroom. Something that she mourned then, but is a total rockstar at now. In fact, she kicked ass so hard for a year… hundreds, if not a thousand, people think she was a miracle case. However, a couple of spots still hung around on her liver. Doctors will say that means terminal, but none of us were going to accept that.
My aunt was whole once. Physically, I mean.
She was sculpted in the image of perfection. Strong & beautiful & brilliant & resiliant. But cancer steals like gouging out of the clay of a perfect piece of art until there is nothing left. My aunt is still all her wonderful qualities, but cancer is doing its best to eat her whole.
I ask why her? After so much loss in my life at only 36.
Why her?
I know why. Because that’s reality. And reality is a dark. greedy thing.
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