Open Windows

I'm going back to the Beagle House starting tomorrow for another round with Bella (she got the growths on her face taken off!), Bonnie and new addition Babs, the liveliest 13 year old cocker spaniel I've ever seen. She's f'ing adorable, people. Just wait until I get pictures of them.

And when I was catching up with the human owner, and she was asking how things were, I found myself telling her about Great Stoic Wonder's Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. The human owner started crying. I was dry-eyed. It was a little weird.

When I was sending out the email to my friends about the Cancer Earthquake, I asked them not to ask me about it in person, as I feared I would lose it and break down. But as soon as I hit send, it was like a window opened, and I found myself able to talk about it in person. No tears.

It's like I leapfrogged over the other four stages of grief and landed directly on Acceptance, and now that I'm here, there doesn't seem to be much point in going backwards to, like, the Bargaining stage. Which I guess makes sense. One of the things that everyone knows about me is that above everything else, I am uber productive. Which means I can't sit on the couch and cry for days. That's not productive. I'm not even suppressing the depression. It's just not there. It's more of a melancholy thing tickling at the back of my brain.

Perhaps my Twin Superpowers of Denial and Distraction are coming into play here. Perhaps it's a cold analysis of I'm Not The One With Cancer, And Being Depressed About It Isn't Going To Help My Dad At All So Might As Well Get On With Living Life.

But I haven't gotten mad at God. I haven't shaken my fist angrily, I haven't asked Him why this is happening. I guess I know better than that. Or possibly because I know He's not gonna answer me, so asking Him why wouldn't be productive. I still pray every day. I still pray for a miracle and ask that Dad miraculously gets into remission somehow.

This Cancer Earthquake hasn't shaken my faith. I can list a dozen people who've made it through much much worse circumstances. If my one friend can survive flying home to be by her mom's side in her final moments, only to have her dad meet her as she walked off the plane and take her home to pick out what her mom would be wearing in her coffin because the mom was already gone, I can make it through this. (That story ripped my guts out.)

This is our road to walk down. Everyone is going to die of something someday. My dad just happens to know what his order is. And, since I got most of my genetic quirks from him (doctors told him he was slightly anemic. I could've told him that, since I'm slightly anemic, and my blood didn't come up with that all on its own) it's probably what's going to take me out much much later down the road. I'll be going through my own colonoscopy, once I figure out if the Can't Deny Pre-Existing Conditions part of Obamacare is sticking or not.

Sandra Bullock's mom died of colon cancer, and Sandra tells a pretty funny story about how Sandra went through a colonoscopy and was so stoned from the drugs that she went shopping and bought ridiculous stuff. Maybe I'll do that. It may not be productive, but it would be funny. Which is productive in its own way, I suppose.