Saving Graces (41 page)

…to Margaret D. and the elderly neighbor she had hardly ever spoken to. As Margaret and her husband drove home from the hospital after her surgery and then pulled into their driveway, the neighbor walked up to her and told her that she herself had had a mastectomy forty years before. They hugged each other and they both wept.

…to the matter-of-fact and far-stronger-than-she-knows Julie J., who after her own August 2004 diagnosis wrote to say she had just gotten through the chemo, and I’m a wimp, she added, so if I can do it, you certainly can manage.

…to survivor Gina S., who wrote of her friend Rachel, who had been battling a brain tumor, successfully, for fourteen years: “It doesn’t define me,” said Rachel, “it’s just one small part of who I am. I’m not a woman with a brain tumor. I’m Rachel, I’m married to Bill, I’m a counselor, I have green eyes, I like Ethiopian food, and I have a brain tumor.”

…to Jonell M., a survivor who said that simultaneously it is horrible and it is not that bad.

…to Kathy M., who when she numbered the angels along her path named family, friends, doctors, her congregation, prosciutto-and-gruyère pastry pinwheels, and mini-sausage quiche.

…to Jan B., who was delighted when her straight hair grew back with an ever so soft lovely curl. But what got her, and it really got her, was that a year later it was back to the same old straight hair. (Jan, at least you got the curls for a year. I got my straight hair back and it was solidly gray to boot.)

…to eighty-year-old Shirley H., who called me “dear girl,” and to eighty-six-year-old Ival S., who called me “honey.”

…to thirteen-year-old Jane A., who gave me good advice on how to keep up my spirits. Her mom is a survivor.

…to Suzanne K., of my home town of Raleigh, who offered to come play the violin for my children.

…to Ray M. and his wife, Courtenay, who was diagnosed with the same cancer as mine on the same day. When he began telling friends about her illness, wonderful people came forward to share their stories of the triumphs against breast cancer. “As I’ve told my wife since this ordeal began,” he wrote, “I feel like I’ve been going through life under a blanket; breast cancer is so common and I really had no idea.”

…to Susan M., whose first words to her doctor when she heard her diagnosis were “But my son is five years old!”

…to remarkable Robin S., the mother of two disabled children, who when her friends asked, “When does G-d think you’ve had enough?” after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, answered “that G-d could not prevent my getting cancer but tapped me on the shoulder to find the cancer in time to get treatment and be around to continue to fight for my children.”

…to Marjorie W., who wrote that when her daughter’s fifthgrade teacher was diagnosed with breast cancer, she did not want to tell her students. But then she decided, If Elizabeth Edwards can tell the country that she has breast cancer, I can at least tell my class, and she did, and the children were wonderful.

…to Barbara S., who wrote to say we had met at a rally in Ohio on October 24, 2004. She said that she had been wearing a survivor shirt from the Race for the Cure, that I had come up to her and hugged her, and that she had felt a strong special connection.

…to an unflappable Mrs. S., who at the time of a bad prognosis thirty-six years before had told her pessimistic doctor point-blank, “I have five children to raise, so forget your prognosis!”

…to Jan G., who told her crazy, zany woman friends who all wanted to help to write her letters, which she put in a notebook. “Sometimes at night,” she wrote, “when every demon from hell was sitting on my chest telling me I was going to die, I would get up and go read that notebook. Those prayers, scriptures, and heartfelt words brought me comfort and courage. I could hear those women’s voices in the words they wrote to me. I will keep that notebook forever.” I know just what Jan meant—I have these letters.

…to Cheryl S., who has the courage to say that having breast cancer is a good thing, for like so many survivors, her life is better now than it was before.

…to Susan N., who wrote to say that when she watched us on television, it pleased her John and I always sat close to each other.

…to Kathryn Z., who looked for the bright side when she noted that I would have no shampoo bills for a while (except for John’s).

…to the high-spirited Cristin C., whose extremely detailed advice about chemotherapy and radiation included “#8: When it comes time for radiation [when they mark the radiation field with permanent blue dots] don’t settle for tattoos in an ugly color. I went down to the local tattoo parlor to get some ink the same color as the freckles on my chest and a young woman with enough studs and metal in her face to attract a magnet treated me like I was the most important person on the planet and custom tinted a bottle of tattoo ink for which she refused to accept any payment.”

…to Krista S., who was right about everything except the most important thing: “I know,” she began, “well wishes from total strangers like me can’t mean much.” And how completely wrong was another well-wisher: “My name is Nancy F. and I’m nobody very important.” So many people wrote in the humble and generous spirit of Ginette R.: “I’m pretty sure you won’t personally see this e-mail, but I don’t care. Prayers travel further than any e-mails.”

…to Jane R., who seconded what Arthur Ashe believed, that “from what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.”

…to Marianne J., who encouraged me with her conviction that “if I were a cancer cell and I found myself in YOUR body, I would run like hell for the nearest exit!!!”

…to Edward C., who wrote that his late father, who had (but did not die from) throat cancer, used to say that the waiting room at the cancer treatment center was the most spiritual place he had ever been…and he’d been to Rome, Assisi, and Canterbury.

…to Elysse W. from Manhattan, who wrote that “I did go to St. Patrick’s today and light a candle for you. Believe me that’s something because I’m Jewish not Catholic. I just felt I needed to do something for you that was more than the norm.”

…to Lynn L., who had met me years before as an unknown mourner at Oakwood Cemetery, and although a “humanist-agnostic,” she promised to pray for Wade whenever she walked by his grave. A promise is a promise, she said, and she followed through and discovered prayer. She wrote to wish me well and to say she had been baptized on May 27, 2001.

…to Michael and Christina M., who sent wishes for my recovery, and a picture of their daughter Kaitlin, “because, in our biased opinion, she is simply beautiful.”

…to Wendy H., who cited Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live your life,” he said. “One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

…to Wendy F., whose mother died of breast cancer and who thought it would be a fine idea to have one room in the White House painted pink.

…to the Landskroner family, who invoked the healing power of children, and for the blessings understood by Bessie Burke Bennett, who taught first grade for twenty-six years and who, although she and her husband had no children of their own, invited her students—over 1,000 children in all—to spend one grand night each year in a big sleepover at their house.

…to Linda S., a former classmate who wrote me as “Mary Beth.”

…to Steve T., who set a place for me at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. You have no idea how wonderful this made me feel.

…to Nancy G., who sent me a glow-in-the-dark rosary that her kids liked when they were little. “I don’t know,” she wrote, “somehow it’s good to have something to hold onto.”

…to Steve C., who wrote to John and quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson—I do love Emerson—“You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

…to the so many lovely children who wrote me, seven-year-old Emily F. of Vermont; eight-year-old Brittni L. of Oregon, eleven-year-old Joseph H. of Indiana; eleven-year-old Zoe S. of Texas, who forcefully expressed her dislike of “cookie-cutter politician’s wives”; and to three twelve-year-old boys, Gabe H., Taylor P.-A., and Ansel N., in Ms. Fay’s class in Madison, Wisconsin, all of whom wrote to say they hoped I would soon feel better.

…to Rabbi Hirshel L. Jaffe, who passed on the old Jewish saying that words that come from the heart enter the heart.

…to William M. Cox, M.D., who wrote from the Alaskan coast of the Bering Sea, where he was reading mammograms 160 miles from the Russian border.

…to Kate P., who wrote eloquently about cancer’s double-edged sword of suffering and human connection.

…to the undoubtedly glamorous Mary Anne D., who compared chemotherapy’s aftermath to a cheap-champagne hangover she once had after a long night in Paris.

…to Lawrie C., who sent lines from Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of a hundred others, in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.”

…to Beverly M., who when her radiologist son agreed with the recommendation of a mastectomy, immediately expressed her chief concern: How would she undress in the open dressing rooms at Loehmann’s? (Actually, Beverly, I have the answer to that for those with mastectomies or those who are simply shy: instead of underwear, wear a bathing suit.)

…to Paula M., whose daughter cut off her own hair and made bangs from it that she placed under her mother’s turban.

…to Jessica H., whose mother died of breast cancer when she was six, Emma Claire’s age.

…to Linda T., who answered the question “Why us?” with the hope that everything happens for a reason—and then she gave a good one: “Perhaps our reason is as simple as the fight against breast cancer has been given two new voices.”

…to well-wishers from London, Rome, Munich, Brussels, from Chartres in France, from Minsk in Belarus, from Mexico City, from American soldiers stationed in Baghdad, from Taiwan, Kuala Lumpur, Mozambique, India, Liberia, Australia, Canada, Senegal, Brazil, Sweden, from Buenos Aires and Patagonia at the tip of South America, from a Maasai warrior in Kenya, from Muslims who offered prayers to Allah for me, and from an Ethiopian who sent me the Lord’s Prayer in Amharic. Many thanks to all those who sent good wishes and prayers in Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and, if I am not mistaken, Chinese.

Among the correspondence I received were special letters from cancer survivors who had also lost a child. I was blessed that they had opened up to me. It broke my heart to hear from Kathy D., who worried so for her ten-year-old son when she was diagnosed. His teachers later told her that he did fine, and she believed Jack and Emma Claire would be fine, too, although she conceded that Cate would probably have a harder time. She spoke of the strength women must have, and how difficult it is to keep some things hidden. Near the end of her warm letter, her heart went out to me for the loss of my son Wade. Then, as she ministered to me, she added what I knew to be the central fact of her life, “I lost my only son, the real love of my life, on July 31, 2001.” Eileen L. survived cancer but had lost her daughter, Elizabeth. Miki G., battling both breast cancer and heart failure, had lost three sons and has no time for anger. Perhaps one’s “heart cannot really open until it breaks,” she wrote.

Lee, Evelyn F.’s son, died when he was only eight and a half. Survivor Donna Z. lost her son Jeff in a car accident in 1991, and she admitted to what I already knew: “I have bad days, but,” she added, “I love to laugh. So did Jeff. What a clown!” How much there was in that simple exclamation point! Josephine G., Ruth D., and Claire K. all won the fight against cancer but lost their sons. Some lost their children to cancer, like survivor Laura P., whose son died at twenty-two. Margaret R. lost her daughter to cancer nine days before I felt the odd shape in my breast; Liz died on October 12, 2004, leaving the sad and beautiful legacy of three daughters of her own. Sandra, the daughter of Walter and Rose S., was almost exactly my age, born six weeks after me. Walter and Rose buried their lovely blonde daughter—they sent me a photograph—after breast cancer took her four months before I found my own. Alex N. died at sixteen from a bone marrow disorder, and Fredi shared this grief at the same time that she offered her good wishes. After the death of her son Quinn, JoAnn K. found the solace I had in the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

There might have been some who would have quit reading, who would have been overwhelmed by the pain, the grief, the misery. I thought instead of the Chinese parable about the mustard seed. A woman’s son dies, and she is inconsolable. She carries his body in her arms to the temple and demands that the priest find a way to restore his life and banish this grief. He will do that, he says, if she will go to all the houses in her village and bring back a mustard seed. She starts to set off, but he stops her. The house in which you find the mustard seed must be a house with no grief. With her son draped across her arms, she goes from house to house. Time and again she finds mustard seeds, but in each house she also finds grief. Finally, exhausted, she returns with her son to the temple. She understands, and she lays his body down. I had already visited these houses, I already knew there was grief. These were not strangers writing me, these were my companions, and I welcomed their conversation as we walked together.

And there were gifts. I have such a splendid library of books on cancer now. Whenever I got a duplicate book, I would leave one in the waiting room of the clinic with a note that anyone who wanted could take it home. I lived a lifetime believing that the reason the words are in a book is that they be shared, and now I was doing that, because they had been shared with me. When a cap to cover my bald head was too small, I passed it on, and now I have passed on almost all those I wore—and I had a great collection—to the women behind me on this path, saving just a few to remind me of the journey. There were bracelets from Elizabeth and Jenzi, from Donna, Jo, and Helene. There were contributions to breast cancer research groups and clinics. There were contributions to the Wade Edwards Foundation, which runs the learning labs. It is impossible to list them all and impossible to leave any single one out. But the ornaments will hang on my Christmas tree, the quilts will adorn our chairs and beds, the books are on our shelves, and all of those hundreds and hundreds of people who thought to spend a few moments thinking of us will be with us always.