Here's to You Mrs. Robinson

She reminded me of an ornate bone china tea cup. She was tiny and fragile, but beautiful and quite capable of standing the hot water. Her spirit was elegant, and she dressed herself in tact and kindness as much as in the designer clothes that she was somehow able to find at outlet malls and thrift stores. She came into the support group around the same time that I did. Her diagnosis was not much different from mine. She only had one tumor and fewer positive nodes, but she was er/pr- and her2/neu+++ like I was. We took the same chemo, but mine was dose dense and only lasted 4 months where her's was stretched out for the full six months. I was never offered the option of a lumpectomy, but in the beginning that is what she had. Though, in the end, she was never able to get a good reconstruction and opted later to have bi-lateral mastectomies. My radiation was targeted to reduce the scatter and had three fields and no boost, so I only had to endure 28 treatments. She had the boost and went for the full 33. After it was all done and we'd met, we decided that if we hadn't beat the cancer, we might as well just rejoice in the time we had left. We had talked about walking the 3Day together, but it was the weekend after she had the bilaterals, so she didn't go. We decided that we should do it together another year, but that year didn't come. After the 3Day my health met some challenges, but her's went into a tailspin. First they found metastisis on her spine and then her ribs. The subsequent radiation treatments were much harder for her than the original ones. But before she was finished with it they found mets in her lungs and then in her brain. She said that we should still rejoice in the time we had, afterall we'd gotten to know each other. Last night, while it was snowing a beautiful wet snow, Laura Robinson went home to be with the Lord. This is awful! My friend is gone and my heart is aching. I can't believe that I can't just get on the phone and say "meet me at Starbucks" or "let's go see that movie". But it is much worse than that! I am shaken in the very core of my being. Once again I am faced with the brutality of the disease that we shared, and again I must confront my own mortality. This doesn't describe it...there are no words that accurately recount the layers of my grief or my terror. Tomorrow night when I put my arms around her children, will they wonder why they are burying their mother and my children still have theirs? Will they be willing to accept whatever comfort that I might find to bring to them? Will they want to see me there? Would it be worse if I didn't go? Would they think that I didn't care about their mother? I care, but I'm made self consious by the disease that we shared and only I survived. And my friend is gone, and they no longer have a mother because we were two of one in seven.

Laura said "Keep living, don't let this make you dead while you are still walking around." So, here's to you Mrs. Robinson. It will be hard to go on without you.