The Stuff of Living

B"H, 

The Twists and Turns of Life, 

So many surprises,

So many lessons,

So much mystery.

My dolls and stuffed animals disappeared one day.  There were no announcements.  It just happened.  No explanations.  It just happened.  Even my bride doll that sat on the silk cushion on my bedspread vanished.  I asked no questions.  I made no comments.  I was young.  Perhaps I was in third grade.  What was I to do?  No one to play with now, my imagination travelled inward.  Oh, suddenly, there was a piano.  Were music lessons my consolation prize?  Who knows?  But, I became a student with the same passion that I experienced when I played with my toys.  Perhaps I studied with even more intensity.  

Years later, I found my dolls and animals in a box in the basement.  I sat there surrounded by all my old friends and cried, "I never let you go.  You were taken from me."  Then I heard someone coming down the stairs.  I quickly packed everyone up and put the box back into storage.  Thank G-d, I now knew where they lived.  

But, my life was different now.  No time for this kind of playing.   However, every time I passed the storage closet door I would knock and whisper my love, "I remember you".

Years have passed since those days.  I am a daughter and a sister.  I've been a grand-daughter.  My grandparents are all long gone from this world.  I am a niece, a cousin, and a friend.  This is just the part of my identity I took for granted.  I married on the eve of forty years old.  That I am a wife and a mother of two are parts of me that still amaze my senses.  There are many more facets to me.  But, only one more needs to be mentioned right now.  It is the attribute that woke me up.  In March, 2004, I officially became a breast cancer patient and survivor.  

Thinking back to this time I am overcome with emotion and cannot even read these words out loud.  All I can do is to think, "now what?"  That is all I can think even while knowing the path of these past six years.  Why am I flooded with "now what?"

No one knows what the next moment will bring.  No one.  In these past six years I have learned that life is teeming for everyone.  After three months of Adriamycin-Cytoxan -- they tell me it looks like red KoolAid* but, I wouldn't know because I never looked --I had three months of Taxotere.  With a dreadful case of Taxotere-hands my parents came to visit in order to help me.  That August 2004, they received a phone call late in the evening.  Our dear family friend, Mr. D, had been killed.  He died in a car crash.  My dear mentor, our friend, was dead.  Oh, Mr. D, you are still teaching me.  You have given me one last lesson to sustain me and give me strength in these difficult days.  No one knows what the next moment will bring.   Not any one of us.  Mr D had narcolepsy, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, heart trouble, gout, high cholesterol, diabetes, and too many pounds on his body.  We were all so heart broken by this news.  But, my unshakable husband was shocked.  "If you had told me that the man had dropped dead from a heart attack or a stroke, I'd believe it.  No way was he killed in a car crash".  

So, it is true.  No one knows what the next moment will bring.  Not the middle aged lady with a difficult diagnosis of breast cancer, not the young, healthy teenager.  And not Mr. D with a gazillion medical problems.  Perhaps this is why I feel flooded by the question, "now what?"  

What is this mystery?  


From the perspective of today comes the beginning of a reply.  We are all human, we are all mortal.  We are born, we live (we hope), and when the time comes as it does for us all at one hundred twenty years* and a day, we leave this world.  There is no medicine to cure anyone of our mortality.  So, when we pray to be blessed with healing and renewed health we must be asking for wellness and length of days to heal our portion of the world.




*Glossary:

Adriamycin is the drug that looks like red KoolAid also known as "The Red Devil".  Cytoxan is clear in solution.

"May you live as long as Moses, 120 years": a traditional Jewish saying.