These are the fears I’ve wanted to voice, but haven’t been able to. Why now? Don’t know, but I started reading Amy’s cancer diary. Can’t tell you why I was doing that, either. Well, maybe I can, but I can’t voice that thought fully. So I’ll gloss over and go on.

When Amy’s dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I said the following in a comment on her site:

I can say for sure and certain that perhaps the most life-shaking experience in the world is the possibility that you’ll lose a parent. I don’t care how close you are or how estranged you’ve become … they’re still god-like in our child-like eyes to us, indestructible beings that never get sick long enough to matter and can Kiss It and Make It Better.

But this is why you have friends. They’re not family, but they have made the conscious choice to spend time with you. Friends will stay with you in such times.
I know this too well, unfortunately. Mom’s stroke two years ago tried to take her from us; blessedly, it failed. Some might say that Mom is changed, and maybe they’re right–but hell, the defiant spirit that is my mother’s … and my grandfather’s … is still there. That mind is still there. Most importantly, that heart is still there.

God, are we all thankful for that.

Mom’s come so far in the last two years, and then that bastard, cancer, tried to take Mom away again. I knew of the possibility long before I said anything here, because it’s a private thing, but hey, this site is about making the private public. And it’s a part of me, my family, and to not talk about them would be a sin of omission.

So, everything looks good, for now. I’m left with guilt, though. Amy noted something a few weeks ago that I remembered when my grandfather died–how much the words of others, innocently said, can hurt. To one who’s lost a loved one to a disease, to hear another tell of their loved one looking into the yawning gap of Death and say, “But God blessed us, and he’s still here!” hurts like hell, because the inverse is, “Well, God didn’t bless us, and we lost ours.”

If that doesn’t shake a body’s faith in the benevolence of a higher power, I’m just not quite sure what will. It would shake mine, and mine’s pretty damn strong. It did, back in the day.

As Amy thought of me, in a roundabout way, I thought of her, too. How the hell can I look in the eyes of my friend and not want to hurt? Looks like Mom has again defeated cancer, and unfortunately, cancer took Amy’s dad. While I just cannot contemplate the pain in Amy’s heart, I can’t help but look at some of my joy over still having Mom and wonder if it’s just not salt in an open wound.

So I have spent the last three paragraphs in maddening tears, the tears of a scared little boy who didn’t lose Mommy … again, and is mournfully joyful. They’re also the tears of a friend again mourning for a friend, because the loss of family is never totally mourned, I don’t think. Maybe you stop mourning every day, stop the agonizing, earth-shaking sobs, but you never stop missing them, and isn’t that what mourning is?

It makes me want to ask for forgiveness, forgiveness that I know is forthcoming but is undoubtely painfully given. And while, here at the end, I’m prone to close the window and not send this entry … how can I not?

Amy, I owe you a hug. I owe you one damned sight more, but I owe you a hug.