The mind is an amazing thing. Today is the 6th anniversary of my second bone marrow transplant. I can say that and my family laughs about how many birthdays I have and which one requires gifts. I joke about leaving blood evidence at the scene of a crime to frame my son.
My mind has taken the whole experience, put it in some nice little box marked “survivor” and moved on.
But every so often the lid of the box slips. I see in that box the times my thirteen year old son had to help me up a flight of stairs, or the time I had to tell my youngest that I had cancer. I see in that box crying in the shower as I pulled the beard off my face, cut free by chemo.
I can remember the promise I made to my wife that we would have only one conversation about what happens if I died. Crying as we wrote down passwords and talked about cremation versus burial.
Stuffed in that box is the fear of dying and the guilt of the burden I placed on those I love the most. Hidden away in that box is the realization that my sons and I were repeating a pattern of growing up with illness that my sister and I had done with my father and his heart surgeries.
In that box was my wife and I crying outside a Georgia hospital where an oncologist’s second opinion made clear I needed a second transplant. A kind nurse came up to us and told us that God loved me and would make it right. I told her that I would love God tomorrow, but at that moment I was mad that he could let this happen to me.
To be sure that box also contains riches. The outpouring of support and love from friends and colleagues and the well wishes of those I didn’t even know. The blood drives that saved lives. Lighting the Night.
We all have boxes where we tuck away trauma. For some the kids never fully shut. For most it takes a lot of help and hours of people willing to listen and guide.
Today I’m opening that box and letting myself remember. I remember for those that are facing cancer and feeling the blackness that they will not have the chance to recover from. Today I ache for my uncle Johnny. I ache for Joanne where this scourge took her far too soon and for Ciaran the colleague I met all too briefly.
Fuck cancer.
