Perspective

After breakfast this morning, my folks and I went over to Vancouver to see my great aunt Rosie and uncle Don. Aunt Rosie has cancer and hemochromatosis and isn't doing so hot. Her son Robert had spoken to my dad and said the doctors weren't thinking she'd be around for Christmas, so my folks wanted to go see her while they were up here and asked me to go with them.

This is the third person in my family I've seen just before they die of cancer. When my gramps died three years ago, I'd seen him just a week before and he didn't look like himself. I saw my great uncle John (one of aunt Rosie's brothers) about a month or so before he died and he didn't look like himself either. Today, aunt Rosie was a shadow of the woman I saw a few months ago at my grandmother's birthday party. All three of them were painfully thin from the chemo and hollow sounding from being dehydrated. But the thing that sticks with me aside from the physical similarities is what they said: "Next time you see me, I'll be out of this bed and running around." (uncle John) "I never have seen your house in Eugene. When I'm feeling better, I'll have to come down for a visit." (aunt Rosie) "Aw, g'won...I can get it myself. I'm fine." (gramps)

I'm not sure where the courage comes from to keep fighting in the face of death the way they all did/do, but I hope it's hereditary.