Cancer of the Heart

Cancer is a vicious disease that affects everyone, somehow. It doesn’t have to be in you to kill you. It eats away at your heart and your soul – and it questions every determined bone in your body. It will beat you down in ways you never expect, and challenge every emotion you can possibly feel. Every form of cancer, to the people around it, is cancer of the Heart.

A mere mention of the word takes your legs out from under you – and you spend the next how many years of your life trying to find them again. You read up to get informed of the latest procedures and medications, you run races that raise money for the fight, you even wear a plastic bracelet so you never forget for a breathing moment who you were before the disease entered your life and who you are now because of it. And you will never be the same.

I went for a run the other day – it was 45 degrees and raining. I get asked if I’m crazy or if running is worth being cold and wet. Crazy – maybe – worth getting cold and wet - absolutely. Running is my way of feeling alive, and for even a brief moment, in control. It has always been my escape, for better or worse. I get asked how I can put myself through the screaming pain in my knees, doesn’t it hurt? Every freakin’ step I take! But feeling pain is a hard way to know that you are in fact still alive.

When I lost my Mom to cancer this year – I lost my desire to do the one thing I loved more than anything - running. Yet another important part of my life this disease took from me. The passion, the desire, and the heart were all so distant from that point on. Mom was gone and running just seemed too sad for me. We had gotten into a routine that I looked forward to every day. Now there would be no more texts before a run and calls after to tell her how I did or how I felt. No more sending her cool pictures of me at the finish line of a race or running in a field of snow on a beautiful Winters day. No more hearing her say “Oh sweetie just be careful you don’t push yourself.” I was afraid that my mind would wander off and think about Mom and her pain and suffering over the years and how there was nothing I could do because I overwhelmed myself with hopelessness.

Hope is a cruel word – you can survive on it until the results you wanted don’t arise and then you dwell on being hopeless because it’s easier. I can’t cure disease and I can’t magically take away all the pain it causes. Therefore, all hope must be lost. But in the end, being hopeless actually takes more energy than having hope, and giving hope to others.

So with a heart, that has been damaged and kicked around by cancer, I am finding HOPE again. I have to – for Mom, for the husband she lost, for my aunt who is currently suffering, and for the mothers of some of my dearest friends – Mama Saslow, Mama Pastor, Mama Karp, Mama Feldman –  for all of them I will run; hot, cold, rain, or snow – I will do it because cancer doesn’t take a break when it’s raining or when it’s too cold out to feel your hands, it never stops…It never takes a break…

This Sunday I will run, the appropriately named, Race for HOPE in honor of Dorothy Feldman and anyone else fighting a brain tumor. It’s because of her strength that I will find my strength within again and run this race with pride. And I will do it with many loving thoughts of my Mom. I will find my passion for running again, because that is where my heart is happy, and my heart will not steer me wrong. Not after all it has been through.

Looking into the faces of the people in the crowd and all of the participants at these races, I see what HOPE looks like. And understand why we all need it and that we can never lose it.

We all need to push through the sadness and self pitying that cancer puts you through and find a race or a walk near you to participate in – donate online – wear a plastic bracelet – believe that one day cancer will not tear apart our hearts and continue to take away the ones we love.

By reading this, you have been affected by cancer.

Filling the Void

I had package on my doorstep the other day, and my stomach sank. I knew it wasn’t from my mom.  I have been so used to my mom sending me packages out of the blue with a little something she found that I might like – or magazines that I may want – or just a little card to say I love you.  Who doesn’t like to get presents? I should have been excited – but my heart hasn’t healed yet. And I am not sure it ever will.

Filling the void - It is a task that never seems to have a conclusive end. How do you know when you have filled the hole that was left by the death of a loved one? Not just any loved one, your most loved one of all – your mom. How do even begin to try?

When my parents divorced, I was three years old, and completely swallowed in a feeling of desertion. When one parent doesn’t come home at night any more – its pretty safe to assume the other will stop coming home as well. My poor mother, struggling with 2-3 jobs at a time to raise two kids on her own, had to fight off a crying child every day when she tried to leave for work. She had to leave the extra 15 minutes every morning to comfort me and reassure me that she would NEVER leave.  Eventually I believed her – because she did in fact come home every night. But deep down, as I got older and realized all of the dangers in the world around us, I started waiting by the door for her to come home, and I would cry if she were running late. This was before cell phones, so you really couldn’t check in too often. But again mom continued to reassure me that she was never going to leave me. And keeping her word, came home every night.

When she was diagnosed with Cancer in 2004, all of those fears of desertion and being alone came back. Oh my God – I am going to lose my mom – my best friend – the person I love most in this world. What will I do? Who will I talk to when I am sad? Who will I call when I need advice? Where will I go for the holidays? Who will make me smile the way she did? Once I got over the shock of hearing the words “You have to come home, mom has Cancer” my body gave out on me. I cried hysterically, I vomited about three times, and I could feel my heart breaking apart inside me. I hopped on the next plane out from Hawaii where I was shooting at the time, and I rushed to be by her side in the hospital. She was in bad shape and the doctors were very concerned.  Our whole family was bracing for what appeared to be the end. But what I remember is her looking up at me over her oxygen mask when I walked in the door, and that sparkle in her eye that got me through some of the toughest moments in my life was still there. Was I scared – hell yes? But deep down I knew this was not the end. I was not saying goodbye. She was not leaving me. Not yet!

It took months in a hospital, being by her side through all of it, bathing her, feeding her, strapping on the oxygen tank and taking her for small slow walks when she was able.  She made it through harsh and vigorous chemo treatments, countless blood transfusions, and a stem cell transplant. I held her hand when they stuffed a needle in her throat to biopsy her thyroid for possible cancer. I slept in a chair, showered in a guest bath, and when mom would dose off I would go out in the hall and try to do a little work on a computer the nurses set up for me. Time seemed to drag on, but she was fighting and her eyes told me we would make it through this.

All of the love and support and her undeterred strength forced that cancer into remission – and after months in a hospital she was on her way home.  Bald and smiling – we conquered our highest mountain yet – Mom still didn’t leave me.

This world has thrown many things at me, and at times I have succumbed and went down crying and feeling depleted. But I always had amazing support from people around me. I always had my mom’s hand there to pick me up, bathing me, feeding me at my hardest hit times. I always had her smile and belief in my strength.  And now I have to find a way to get through the dimming of the light of my life without her in front of me.

Each Day I have to find a way to make it through without her, without her smile, her laugh, encouragement, and pride. If a day goes by where I don’t think of her, am I forgetting her? Disrespecting her? Or trying to move on?  Do I stick with holiday traditions that I enjoyed so much with her? Or do I make my own because the pain of not having her to share our traditions is too great? Is that filling a void or making it bigger.

I cry every day. That’s not an exaggeration – its fact.

Cancer took away my mom’s spirit 5 years ago – but it did not take away her passion to live and ability to love. Unfortunately, in the end, the bad guy won.

I can’t let this world break my heart. It may have taken a piece of it away, but the ability to heal still exists in me. I have to know that the void isn’t in need of filling more than it is accepting. Accepting that mom’s love can still be as strong as it always was even if I can’t hear her voice. (I miss her voice so much) She will always be a part of me. She gave me her beautiful smile that I look at every day in the mirror and see her smiling back at me. She gave me the tools to love and to be loved, and to understand what she always tried to tell me – that she will never leave me.