8/31/2013
Today is a bittersweet day, Rebekah feels pretty good and as I sit and listen to all the kids playing together I think "this is almost normal." Today I wish I could go back in time; to a time when, to my knowledge, kids didn't get cancer, and when they did they would get a bald head and do some chemo and be done and grow up healthy and normal. To a time when if some one typed dipg it meant their kid was sitting on their lap "helping" Mommy or Daddy type, not that a family or a new friend would lose their child. To a time when I hadn't had to talk to my 4 year old child about going back to live with Heavenly Father being ok because little children do not have sins so they get to go straight back to live with him. When kids parents didn't have to choose to removing a part of them as "the best option". To a time when I would have been planting with my daughter instead of telling her, "no you can't play in the dirt." When she had no clue what neutropenic meant. When she didn't ask for zofran or ben- phen. When I could sleep through the night without worrying that the next day might be a bad day or that she would spike a fever. To a time when I didn't have to worry that that fever could mean an infection that could kill my little girl. With an agony that wenches my soul I miss our old, before cancer life...
But would I go back to a time when it wouldn't put a huge smile on my face to hear, "Rebekah, we need you to take down that armed security guard. Can you do it?" Or when I didn't have the appreciation I now have for a husband and father who would wake up in the middle of the night to give meds so I can have a few solid hours of sleep because he wants me to be able to drive safely the next morning and so that his daughter won't have to list throw up as the first thing she does in the morning. Or a time when I wasn't as grateful for a warm meal cooked by someone else, or a smile from someone I know is having a harder time then me wouldn't give me the strength to get through another day with a little less complaining. No, I can't go back and I don't want to. Was life easier; did I have less joy; less sadness; less strength; less gratitude?... Maybe, I don't know, I can't compare where I was a year ago with where I am now, life is just different. Can a grieve the loss of my ignorance of the world of childhood cancer and still rejoice in what I have found in it? I believe so.
