The year nobody dies

My mother died four years ago today. Four years is not enough time to diffuse grief. I don't know if there is a set number of years that will do that but I know 1460 some odd days isn't enough time to make the pain go away.

It's been especially hard to get over her death because since she passed away in 2004 there has been a series of deaths in my family. In 2005 it was my paternal grandfather. In 2006 my maternal grandfather. And in 2007 my maternal grandmother. Not to mention assorted distant family members and friends of the family. There's been so much grieving I forget what it feels like to live without that constant cloud of hurt that lingers. There has been no time to heal.

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They say bad news comes in threes. I don't know if that's entirely true but I do know that good news follows good news and bad news tends to follow bad.

I remember the day I found out my mom's cancer had come back. Or more to the point, it had never really left and now it was really bad. She was going to need another extremely invasive, time consuming surgery, which meant a long recovery time but no guarantees it would actually work.

A while later I got a call from the women's clinic I went to. They had found something in my last pap smear that was very concerning. I had level four dysplasia, one small step away from cervical cancer. It was very aggressive and if I didn't have the offending cells removed I would be in a heap of trouble.

I lost it. I started crying on the phone which is not like me at all. I can handle a lot but that much at one time... It did me in. I was inconsolable for the rest of the day though I told nobody about my problem. I needed to concentrate on one stress at a time.

In the end I was fine. Things were taken care of and I healed. My mom had her surgery and it was as awful as we feared, but she pulled through and lived another four years or so. But to this day even though I can absorb stresses in my life like a sponge and seem like I've got my shit together it just takes that one thing to tip the scale and have everything come tumbling out on top of me.

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Fisher had a CAT scan today, today of all days. After a horrendous weekend where he did nothing but vomit and subsequently lost five pounds from his 75 pound frame, refused his food and generally looked nothing like the dog I knew just a few weeks before, it was decided he needed more tests STAT.

The vet is still not sure what's wrong with the poor dog. What she could tell me was though she didn't know what it was she did know what it wasn't. No masses, spleen looked good, blah blah blah. Then she mentioned lymphoma. There is a possibility of lymphoma.

And treatment options if it came to that.

And words like "aggressive chemotherapy" and "six to 18 months".

And I lost it, just a little, but this time I kept it all inside. I waited until we hung up before letting the tears fall.

He needs a biopsy but his platelets level is so low there is concern of him bleeding out. The bladder stones are still there but they are not a result of the existing liver problem, as she first thought. His white blood cell count is going crazy. He has elevated, very elevated, ALT levels and some other initials that I can't quite remember because I started to zone out.

It was all too much to take on a day that already was too hard.

Just too much.

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I was speaking with my aunt the other day, my mom's closest sister in both age and relationship. She's the one who always keeps in touch and makes sure we don't lose contact with each other when the rest of the family could care less.

She mentioned that she really needed 2008 to be an easier year. The last four have been so hard and she needs to rest. We all need to rest and heal.

She said she really needed 2008 to be the year that nobody dies. I couldn't agree more.