for the last five months or so we have travelled weekly to lismore for her chemo session, greeted by smiling faces, inane chatter, and various visits from the hospital staff. as a self protective measure we have both always approached this session with an upbeat attitude. we talk and laugh and i prepare vegemite and butter saos and cups of tea for her in the patient kitchen. she browses on her ipad, occasionally sharing shocking or ridiculous news stories or you tube videos, and i read a book or the newspaper, or sometimes commandeer the ipad to play a game.
we have good rapport with most of the staff, and a couple in particular, who always stop by and say hello and swap stories of kids starting high school or new christmas rabbits.
we have recently encountered a new face on the chemo ward. with the arrival of this interloper my daughter is no longer the youngest face on that ward. this new patient is whisked in in a wheelchair, through the public ward and into a private room, so we are foiled in our vouyerism, and so we wonder about this new young lady, who seems so sad.
in the last couple of days i have learned more information than i wanted to about this young woman, and this knowledge now sits heavy in my heart, my already broken heart, and i can never unknow this new pain.
this young woman passed away last week, aged 16, from osteosarcoma. she was first diagnosed in may of last year. in an eight month period she went from being the healthy, happy and engaged eldest child and big sister of a tight knit family, through various surgeries and removal of limbs, several chemotherapies, and who knows what else, until she finally breathed her last 8 days ago.
to me this knowledge is unbearable. guessing at the grief of this family i have never met, feeling the unfathomable shock of this ride.....i am crying buckets of tears......
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this morning my youngest (8 years old) visited her psychologist and disclosed that she feels she is the only one who grieves the loss of her dad. she thinks the rest of us are not sad, and she feels alone in her sadness.
i don't know how to display my sadness around her, because my own sadness is limitless. these tears of mine belong to such myriad losses and griefs. these tears of mine are difficult enough for myself to bear, how can i share them with my little girl? these tears can only come in the very brief moments in which i am alone, such is their forceful nature. i feel sure they would consume anyone who came near.....
there are days when my load seems too much for me to bear. times when the responsibility of steering this little ship of a family is too great. times when my despair is all consuming, and still i arise each morning - whether or not i have slept well or deeply - and i make the breakfasts, and i make the lunches, and i corral the children into their school clothes, bags on their backs and off to school. and while they are gone i clean the dishes, wash their clothes, take their sister to one of a million appointments, prepare her food and coax her to eat it, sit beside her through her long and lonely days of nothingness.....and then i pick the kids up, participate in their chatter, prepare their dinner, tidy up from their dinner, get them showered and into bed......and i am completely empty....
