Life can be like walking barefoot on broken glass, egg shells and a bed of hot coals, all at the same time. And if you can do it without pain or damage to self or others. Are you then void of a soul?
We are first born, we live, then we die, but each thread of the fabric of our life is weaving a story. Each story is a volume and there are enough volumes to fill a library. Some are lighthearted, gay and full of joy. Others, black, riddled with pain and full of sadness. These then will rip the flesh from one”s soul and leave the body raw and open to all that would infect.
This was how I felt when I was informed that I was the carrier of a mutated gene called BRCA1, the cancer gene.
I have four children and three have the mutated gene. Two daughters diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Both have had complete hysterectomies and chemotherapy. Both have had preventative double mastectomies.
Our oldest daughter has tumors on her brain, needs more surgery and gamma knife radiation. Seems OK. No, the beast has returned. What next?
The guilt one feels for being the carrier of such destruction in one”s own family is devastating, even though you know this was your inheritance from your mother and grandmother. How do you then arrange the volumes in an orderly fashion that will allow one to survive without open wounds? But will allow those wounds to scab over and heal and to leave only ugly scars in their place. How do you omit the guilt you feel for the pain you have caused your wife and family?
Is faith in oneself, in family and friends enough?
Is there more than faith, trust, love of family and willpower? Or must we trust in all these things in order to survive in this world so full of pain? As I sat pondering my thoughts and writing this, a voice in my head suddenly spoke to me. I knew it was the voice of my late sister Beverly who had passed away years earlier after fighting the affects of BRCA1 for 42 years.
Whenever I was in a down mood, Beverly would leave quarters lying around in obvious places just to let me know that everything was going to be OK. I would rise from my easy chair to do something and when I returned I would find quarters on the seat. I would find them on the floor by the side of the bed, on the night stand and in front of the sink.
I found four in a row one day when I opened the office door. I knew they were all the work of my sister, so I turned that coin over in my mind and there on the other side was stamped those four glorious words “_ _ _ _.”
Now I believe I can share my pain as well as the pain of my family.
Life is an ongoing lesson and a struggle that we will never completely learn or overcome, but we must share it or parish and always believe in those four words stamped on the face of the coin “_ _ _ _ .” (read the coin)
Vernon M. Churchill
Middletown
