A Path Through

When I reflect back on the past few weeks, difficult conversations have become the norm. However, there was one that was the hardest and the one that broke my heart; telling my children that I had breast cancer.

Those who know me understand that I am one of those parents who feels it is important to have an open and honest relationship with their kids. My husband is very much on the same page, but most times he plays “straight cop” to my “goofy cop”, especially when the conversations moves to the more…sensitive (did I mention we are in the teen years?). We balance each other out which is useful. Our family also recognizes that as much as there is nothing that can not be discussed, we may not always be happy about what is being shared. In these situations, it is also important to respect the need to process emotions before you can move forward. That said, at the end of the day we NEED to be there for each other.

Now with the above in mind, I will admit that with all that was happening I broke the communication rules, well kind of. I was partially transparent as I had shared with our son a week earlier that I had had a mammogram and was a bit worried. At that time, he looked at me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said “All will be good mom and we will worry when we have to”. That is where the transparency stopped as I could not bring myself to bring our youngest into the conversation. It was all too unknown and I needed to protect her for as long as I possibly could.

So, on January 21st, after a quiet drive home and a few more tears, my husband and I sat quietly in our family room waiting for our kids to come home from school. There was 45 minutes before the first child was expected to walk through the door, followed shortly by the other. Despite the short time period, minutes ticked by slowly, as if they knew the weight of what was to come. Occasionally, one of us would break the stillness to say something about the approach we should take only to have the conversation trail off to silence again. However, in my head I walked through the conversation over, and over, and over again and it never got easier.

I have often thought when you have your first baby, you should receive a User Manual with a very fulsome troubleshooting section (I also think if you have more than one child you should get a bottle of gin and a poster with the kitten hanging from a tree with “Hang in There” on it). Reality is, as a parent you have no clue what is coming next and how to handle it. Right now, there is school, life, friends, teen age angst, hormones, sibling rivalry, and don’t even get me started on learning “new math”! No where in all of these “every day” parenting issues that you need to figure out is how to tell your kids you have cancer.

The sound of the garage door opening quickly brought me back to reality and what was about to happen. All I kept thinking was smile, don’t look anxious, and BE POSITIVE. As our son appeared, he looked me in the eye and there was no need for anything to be said. He sat down, put his face in his hands and quietly asked “can it be cured?” As I started to try to form a response, with all the unknowns swirling in my head, the front door opened and a cheery little 11-year-old popped around the corner completely oblivious to the life changing moments that lay ahead.

This was it. There was no script, no user manual, no troubleshooting guide, no key messaging to support what needed to be said; we were on our own.

So on that Friday afternoon, I held my kids hands looked them in the eye, and I told them I had breast cancer. I spoke through tears, tried to smile, and highlighted the need to be positive as I was a fighter. Despite all these efforts, there was nothing I could say or do that could lessen the feeling of everything crashing down around us. Even as I write this, I can vividly remember the frantic look in my little girls’ eyes as she spoke through tears, “Mommy, I don’t want you to die”. This was enough to break every ounce of courage I had mustered to stay strong and I swept them both in the tightest embrace I could manage. Through tears, I held them tight, assuring them it was all going to be okay, WE were going to be okay.

As I looked up at my husband, despite his efforts at strength, he too had broken under the weight of the moment. There was simply no way that we could have scripted this; there was NOTHING to prepare us or them for the impacts of what was happening. There was nothing to help guide us through this. We were (and are) flying by the seat of our pants.

For a bit of time we sat, talked, and shed a few more tears. My son did what he does and threw a protective hand around his sister as he tried to bring a sprinkle of humor into the situation. Moments later, the weight had lifted, the tears had dried (for now) and laughter returned to our little world. With that, my little posse of four committed to taking on whatever lies ahead as a family, as there was nothing we could not weather when we stood together.

So, my husband and I got ready to head back to the outpatient clinic for the ultrasound, the kids shared their dinner orders for us to pick up on the way home, and life started again as we stepped forward onto the path with a focus on making it through…together.