Remembering Cheryl....

Dear Readers......

It is with great love and sadness that we tell you that Cheryl passed away last Wednesday, April 22nd on a sunny evening with her beloved Robert at her side.

My name is Cathie A. and I am the sponsor of the blogger, Cheryl H.   I am here in Cheryl's home with Robert and we both feel Cheryl's presence as we have hacked into her blog (she would love us being naughty).

As I'm sure readers of Cheryl's blog know...she was a wise and witty woman with 29+ years in the program of Al-Anon.  She was also a very talented writer, gardener, painter, stained glass artist, seamstress (really...who sews their own jeans?), hysterically funny, dear friend, sister and much loved spouse.  Her talents, her humility and her ability to laugh at herself were inspiring.

Robert was telling me this morning of the joy of them both falling into fits of laughter after noticing an oversized jar of Nutella while grocery shopping.   One of my favourite personal memories was of visiting Cheryl in hospital with another Al-Anon friend after her last surgery ... the three of us exchanging stories of our own pre-recovery insanity and laughing so hard that Cheryl had to ask the nurse for pain relief after we left.  Such is the stuff of a simple life well-lived.

Cheryl spoke often of the gifts that working the Al-Anon program had given her.  Her ability to use her program in dealing with life's challenges (yes, even the REALLY big ones) was amazing and an inspiration to many (I put myself at the top of that list).

Thank you for allowing me to share my memories of my dear friend Cheryl.  If you wish to share your thoughts and feelings here......please do.....Robert would love to hear from you.

Love in Al-Anon, Cathie A.

So It Begins.

I had my first radiation treatment today. It was all over in a matter of minutes; I was finished before realising that they'd started.

It was painless,  but I'm told that with the attending "sunburning" of the skin which will occur, I may suffer further pain on top of what I'm now experiencing.

Last night I spent some time cleaning my glass collection, polishing the beautiful golds and reds and purples. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my friends, my lover Robert, my sister: who cares for me, and is struggling with her own pain about it all, and my brother, who adores the painting I made for him, which he received yesterday, finally.

I miss my meetings so much, but am too ill to attend them. When someone comments here on my blog, it feels a little bit like a meeting, and I am truly grateful for your input, please know that, and keep talking to me!

I'm hoping that my fight over this cancer will succeed enough for me to go back to a more normal form of life, with meetings, and social encounters, and gardening. I'm feeling like I may be able to beat this one back enough to have some more life granted to me. I'm too young, and unwilling to accept dying yet. I want to live.

Mood Swings.

Today started out well, then I was sitting here doing some unpicking of a waistband on a pair of pants I'm altering, because they've gotten too big for me, and began thinking about my partner and I collecting seeds for the rooftop terrace garden, and wondered if I'll even be around next year to garden. Within a short time, my mood has darkened considerably, and I've gone from feeling fairly cheerful and positive to a much more negative frame of mind. I'm wondering if there is any point in doing some of the future planning I've been doing - will I be alive to do these things I'm discussing with friends and family?

I was diagnosed on August 12th, it's now September 21st, and the waiting to get all the tests done in order to stage the tumour, and being told nothing whatsoever until they are all completed, is beginning to wear upon me. I'm trying with all of my might to accept the waiting period as just something which must be endured, and I'll find out when I find out, and not before, but some part of me is straining at the bit and wanting to scream, "Just tell me how far gone the bloody cancer is, will you?"

Patience has never been my strong suit, and waiting to find out something like this is trying beyond anything I've ever gone through. Most of the time, I can manage to push the wanting to know out of my consciousness, and go on with the next thing, but some days, days like today, it fills my worldview and leaves me feeling unable to cope. I want to collapse weeping in someone's arms, but as a friend who had cancer a few years ago said to me on Wednesday, "They're all so down about it that you feel like you have to stay cheerful for their sake, it leaves you feeling terribly alone."

That it does. My partner lost a family member to cancer a couple of years ago, so I have been feeling uncomfortable talking to him about it. My friends keep telling me how strong I am, how brave, etc, which leaves me feeling like I'm getting an unspoken message that this is how they want me to be, so that I feel stifled about revealing myself to them; where can I go to howl and cry and rage against this quirk of my fate? I feel alone in a way I wouldn't have expected. My sponsor has said several times that she's "proud of me for the way I'm handling it." That sets me up to feel that if I were to collapse into weeping the way I sometimes want to, I would be disappointing her. So I don't feel as though I can go to her when it threatens to overwhelm me.

I haven't felt this alone in a long, long time. I realise that partly, it is because no-one who hasn't had cancer can ever truly understand the way it feels, and partly, it is my own inability to reveal myself to other people past a certain point.

Today, I'm struggling.

Later:
I decided to speak to my partner, Robert about how I was feeling, because being the sensitive man that he is, he knew I wasn't doing well, and asked outright what was going on. It was an enormous relief to be able to get it all out over a period of several hours. At one point, we stood in the kitchen locked in an embrace while I wept into his shirt. There is nothing so comforting as loving arms holding us tightly.
He told me that he doesn't want me trying to protect his feelings by not telling him what's going on with me. He suggested that I call my sponsor, so I did, and was honest with her about my difficulties revealing my feelings to her, and was told lovingly that she is proud of me whether I'm doing well, or as I am today, being swept around in eddies and whirlpools of emotion.

So it all comes down to my own expectations of myself, which I've projected onto the people who love me - an old behavior pattern to which I've regressed somewhat, during this difficult time. I'm feeling much better this evening, am going to have something to eat, get some sleep, and go to church in the morning, and to see my sponsor in the afternoon.

Thank you to those of you who have written in support of me, I'm deeply grateful.

A Year Later.

My dear friend died last year on May 17th, today. I woke up this morning remembering, and wept for the loss of him. Seems like every song I put on reminds me of some aspect of his character. He was wonderfully confident and caring and the people in his life flourished in the light of that attentiveness and focused attention, just as his garden flourished from the care he lavished upon it. Rarely have I met anyone so universally adored, he made friends anywhere he went, and the warmth of his nature was unjudgemental, he was just one of those amazingly loving people you find once or twice in a lifetime, if you are very fortunate.

I thank my Higher Power for the trip my friend and I took across to the big city on the mainland, because that was the last time before he went into hospital, and never came out.

I remember his humour, never biting or unkind, but screamingly funny all the same, he had a turn of phrase that could render his listeners helpless with laughter. He was generous with his possessions, his time and his love, and I miss him.

Fighting Fear.

Today my friend (who has just undergone major surgery to remove cancer tumours) was finally well enough that I could go to the hospital to visit him. When I walked into the hospital room, I had a second's pause of my mind utterly refusing to believe that this ghostly pale, thin. weak man was my wonderful, loving friend. Only a month ago, he was still a vibrant energetic man. Now he's lying in a hospital bed too weak to speak much above a whisper, with IV's in each arm, and various drainage tubes, catheters, pain medication feed lines all running into and from his arms. I didn't break stride, and I asked God to please grant me the strength not to let the shock show in my face, or body language. I bent to hug him as gently as possible, and kissed him, saying how lovely it was to see him, and agreeing that the view from his window wasn't too bad, since he could see mostly trees.

He patted the side of his bed for me to sit, so I did, and was joking with him, teasing him lovingly, talking about gardening and my little dog, while the shock of seeing him looking so dreadfully thin and ill resonated through me like a cold ache. I stayed for a half-hour or so until he said he was beginning to tire, then hugged and kissed him again, went out into the hallway, took the elevator back to the ground floor, and walked slowly back out to my car.

 I'm still feeling that shock of my first sight of him, and the prognosis, told to me by his partner, and by my friend himself - he has been given 3 months to live because the cancer has metastasised to his liver in "hundreds of places" according to the oncologist. When I was sitting there with him today, he looked at me, and said softly, "I might not make it."  I gave him the little silver ankh I'd brought for him, the Egyptian symbol of everlasting life, and reminded him that doctors are just trained people with opinions, and that he has a ferociously strong will and life force.

I'm writing this while wearing a leather vest he gave me not long ago, it somehow brings him near to me, and reminds me to keep on praying for him. He's been a source of love and kindness for many of us in his 61 years, one of those special people with a loving generosity of spirit.

I wish that I could find a way through tears to break up the stone of aching grief in my chest, but I can't weep. I'm feeling bottled up, trying to find my way to acceptance through praying for my friend, and for my little dog. I love them both so, and I can do nothing in either case, it's beyond my control, I can only live with however it will be. I am grateful for the live that each of them has given me, and for the love I've felt for them. Love is a precious gift, and I've been blessed in my life.

The Wisdom of Old-Timers.

I'd forgotten, when writing yesterday's post, about an old-timer I knew from an open AA meeting, in a place we once lived. He was one of those gruff old guys who put on the facade to try to hide a very soft heart; when he was a young man, men were supposed to be tough all the time.

He had a phrase he used, for those people who were really involved in AA, in sponsorship, and meetings, and for one reason or another, decided to pull out, pull away, and stop showing up. It was a shorthand way to describe the very real danger they were in, when they decided to go it alone, without the support of AA, and other alcoholics, to maintain their sobriety.

In his almost 50 years in AA, he'd seen many  people who'd stopped attending meetings, drank again, and never managed to make it back. There was no judgement in his eyes when he spoke of this, only a resigned sadness for the human ability to deny reality, and sometimes, his eyes would well up, as he talked of someone lost again to the disease of alcoholism.

He'd been to countless funerals, for those who once sat beside him in meetings, and the pain showed when he spoke of this. But somehow, he never lost his ability to believe in sponsorship, and he had an unquenchable belief that "it works if you work it.

I wouldn't have thought I'd ever have forgotten his term, because it gave me the shivers, and still does now.

He called them "dead man walking."

Grief.

My friend who was ill with a brain tumour has died.

One of my closest and most loved friends drove an hour and a half from her town to mine, to give me the news in person. We went for lunch and spoke of our friend, grateful that at the end, she hadn't suffered, she just slipped quietly from coma into death.

The illness and death of people I love is one of "the things I cannot change" and either I find a way to acceptance, or I will be fighting against the natural progression of life, and that would be tilting at the most immense of windmills.

I wrote to a friend last night, and received the comfort I was seeking, and for that, I'm grateful - we cannot erase the pain life sends us, not for ourselves, and not for each other, but we can walk quietly beside each other when the path is most challenging, offering an arm when our friend stumbles, and being a comforting companion though the vicissitudes of our lives.

Some Days You Eat The Bear, Some Days The Bear Eats You.

I first heard that saying, when we moved out of the city to a very small town - a hamlet, really, perched on the edge of the ocean. (I remember being "downtown" in this tiny place, and looking around, wondering just what on earth I'd signed up for. I had no idea. None. It was....an experience. I was happy when we moved back to civilisation as I knew it, years later. Let's just leave it at that.)

I've always liked this saying, because it seems to contain a certain wisdom, about the rather random nature of life's vicissitudes. Life isn't fair. Things happen, and we must struggle to deal with them as best we can. Some days we manage to triumph, and we have bear steaks for dinner, feeling great satisfaction as we saw and chomp, because today, we were victorious.

In other encounters, the bear is dining on us, while we kick and scream and fight to survive. Some days, we feel as if we are still alive while he tries to rip our heart right out of our chest.

I've learned in program that I cannot eradicate all the bears from life. I cannot stop them from wanting to dine upon me and my loved ones. I can use my common sense and good judgement to be careful, but this must be within the framework of a life worth living, and not so bounded on all sides by fortification that the sun is blocked out in the name of aiming for safety.

For the rest, I will rage and weep and rail, against fate and life and the cruelty of illness and death at stealing the people I love away, and then when I am finished weeping, and am spent and exhausted, I will work to accept that which I cannot change.

Life Is Fragile.

I'm in shock tonight, I've just heard that my neighbour of two houses down died this week - she was only in her late 40's. I didn't know her at all well, but I did have gardening conversations with her over the years we've lived here. I'd stop to talk when she was in her front garden, and I was passing with my dogs. She had a gentle voice, and a friendly manner.

At times like this, I am reminded of the fragility of life, and the terrifying celerity with which our loved ones can be snatched away. On my walk tonight, I met an elderly friend who lost his wife of 32 years late last year. When I asked him how he was managing, he replied that he hadn't thought he'd ever have to do anything as hard as just continue living, after the woman he loved had died.

My neighbour was still a young and healthy woman - just recently, she had purchased a new car. I saw it sitting on the street in front of her house this evening, as I returned from my dog walk. She barely had time to enjoy that gift to herself, before she was gone.

The wolf is always at the door.