Signs

At 1 in the morning, the shrill ring of my sister Mary’s phone sent us leaping out of our beds.

Mary groped in the darkness and finally located her phone plugged into its charger beside the bed in our room.

“Hello!”

Deb, in the other bed, had at last found the lights, and the three of us shivered in the frigid air conditioning of the motel room.  Mary looked at us and snapped her phone shut.

“No one’s there,” she said.  “It says ‘unknown number’.”

It was the early morning of Terri’s surgery date, Tuesday, August 17^th.  Deb and Mary and I had booked a motel room close to the Omaha hospital where Terri would have her operation.  We crawled into bed again, but sleep was out of the question.  It was odd, that phone call.  Even stranger, it suddenly occurred to me, was the fact that Terri’s surgery should have fallen on Tuesday the 17^th.  Mom had died 31 years ago on a Tuesday morning on the 17^th of April at about 1 o’clock in the morning.  And now, at 1 o’clock, Mary’s phone had been ringing in the darkness.

I’d never been a big believer in signs or much of any thing else supernatural.  Not until Mom died.  But something so strange happened the night Mom died that even 30 years later, it remains crystal clear in all our collective memories.

Dad and we older kids, along with our aunts Patty and MaryLee, and our parish priest Father Kurtenbach, drove home from the hospital at around 2 in the morning right after Mom died.

A kind neighbor had stayed with our younger brothers and sisters and put them to bed.  When we arrived home from the hospital, Dad woke each of our sleeping little siblings and delivered the news.

“Mom’s gone.”  Dad was a mountain of a man, and he gathered each of my weeping brothers and sisters on his lap and tenderly rocked them.  Eventually, in spite of the late hour, we congregated in the living room, and after the trauma of Mom’s death it was a great comfort to feel the nearness of each other.  Harry, Mom’s devoted little mutt terrier, hopped in my lap, circled twice, and plopped down.  The weight of his warm little body was consoling somehow.

We talked for a long time about the events of the night.  Father Kurtenbach coaxed stories about Mom from all of us, but there was a bewildering sense of unreality.  And at last, there was nothing to do but go to bed. 

Father Kurtenbach departed, and as we turned out lights and settled in our beds, the house became dark and quiet. Because my aunts were in my room, I was bunking out on the living room couch, and I cried on a corner of my blanket.  From every other room, I heard soft sniffles and an occasional muffled sob.

“Where’d you go, Mom?” I whispered in the darkness.  “I don’t know where you are.”

As if on cue, Harry, Mom’s dog, suddenly screamed.  It’s the only way any of us could describe it later.  None of us had ever heard a sound like that come out of Harry.  He had been sleeping in his accustomed spot on Mom’s chair in the t.v. room when he suddenly screamed in terror and made a scrambling, yelping dash through the entire length of the house.

We all fell out of our beds, running into each other in the dark and fumbling for lights.  Harry sped straight under Mom and Dad’s bed down the hall, and by the time we gathered in Dad’s room, the little kids were diving frantically under the covers clutching Dad.  My brother Rick pulled poor Harry out from under the bed and spoke soothingly to him.  Harry was trembling violently, and his hind legs suddenly gave out on him completely.

I examined his paws for stickers and searched for any thing logical about his bizarre behavior, and Rick checked him for injuries.  But Harry was fine.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with him except that he was terrified out of his wits.

We were all thinking the same thing.  But the night had been long and traumatic, and this was just altogether too much.  None of us could speak of it just then, but we knew that Harry had seen Mom.  She had come to say goodbye, and Harry had seen her.

“Did you really have to scare Harry to death like that?” I asked her once, sitting by her grave on a calm, summer afternoon a month or so later.  Maybe she did.  It’s been more than 30 years, but we still remember that night.  Mom had to do something big to let us know she was there – something so dramatic we’d remember it for the rest of our lives.

And now, on the morning of Terri’s operation, came that mysterious phone call.  It would be just like Mom to check in with us, to let us know she was keeping an eye out for Terri.  As we were preparing to leave our motel room a few hours later, I asked Deb and Mary if they thought it strange that we received an anonymous phone call.  Did they remember it was the 17^th?   Both looked up with dawning realization.

“I didn’t even think of it,” Mary said. 

We were leaving our motel room and locking the door when I happened to glance up and notice our room number.  “Would you look at that?”   I pointed, in a kind of awe, to our room number. “Room 417.”

April 17^th, that all-important anniversary.

Mom was with us.

Waiting for Surgery

Cancer is all about waiting – for mammogram and MRI results, for blood tests, for surgery dates.

And while you wait, you go to the dark side.  Terri was struggling, and we knew it.  My sisters and I, having endured numerous breast biopsies, understood all about the agony of waiting.  You can try frantically to fill the hours.  You can clean and work and make out the grocery list.  But in an idle minute, you imagine your future.

You see yourself lying in a Hospice bed in the dining room with the cat snuggled up against you and the grandfather clock ticking away your last minutes.

You hope the church is overflowing at your funeral and that your youngest son won’t forget to tell the congregation about the night you stayed up to nurse his fever and rewind his Barney tape.

However, life marches on without you, and you see it all too clearly.  There are wedding days and tow-headed grandchildren opening Christmas presents.  But you’re not there to ooh and aah.

Worst of all, you see the stunning woman who shows up at the front door delivering a strawberry cheesecake, your husband’s favorite, and the way her athletic stomach lies oh-so-flat, and her back doesn’t bulge beneath her bra line with those little rolls of fat.

“Definitely a step up for him,” you hear the voices.

It eventually dawns on your husband how lucky he is that his new wife doesn’t obsess about money the way his old wife used to.  Of course she doesn’t.  She’s already got money, and plenty of it.  She can redecorate your house and strip that tacky wallpaper off your bedroom wall – the bedroom you shared with that fickle man who fell for the first sleazy tart who laughed at his cat impression.

But really, you concede guiltily, he’s been so good to you.  He stuck by you all these years.  When you fall asleep on the couch, he covers you with a blanket, and the first time you were pregnant, he went out late at night to buy you that package of Skittles.  You want your husband to be happy again.  Just not too happy…

These fleeting thoughts flash by in a second, much like the thoughts of a dying man who sees his life flash before his eyes. 

Terri didn’t share her own private agonies, but we watched her already lean body become rake thin. Then one afternoon in early August, she called my sister Deb.  “The surgery date is set," her voice shook.   "August 17^th.”

She wept, and Deb comforted her.  Deb is good at that.  She could soothe a suicidal plane hijacker safely to the ground. 

But with the big date finally set in stone, Terri abruptly stopped crying.  She also, unfortunately, stopped eating.

“Mom!” her oldest daughter Patti scolded her.  “Eat your pizza!”

Terri would choke down a few bites, but she didn’t fool anybody.  For those two and a half weeks, she cleaned and cooked and painted bedrooms with Patti, who was determined to keep her mother busy until the surgery.  She went with Paul to their children’s summer volleyball and basketball games and graciously greeted the flood of friends from her church and school communities who filled her house, not just with food but also their love and support.

And she was kind – even to the few well-intentioned fools who unleashed frightening stories about various relatives who had succumbed to cancer “just like yours.”

One day, in the grocery store parking lot, a woman Terri barely knew accosted her.  “Terri!” she bellowed, barreling straight over to throw her arms around Terri and sob in her neck.  “How could this be happening to you?”  For the next 20 minutes, the woman wailed and deposited her endless problems into Terri’s sympathetic lap.

“What was she thinking?” I fumed when Terri told me about it.

“Oh, you know,” Terri was forgiving, “she was just trying to be nice.”

I marveled at her tolerance and her courage.  “You put me to shame, Ter,” I said.  “You’re so brave.”

“I’m not brave!” she protested.  “I’m scared to death.”

But that was precisely why she was brave.  For two and a half weeks, she got up.  She put on her makeup.  She took care of her family.  She prayed.

And she waited for August 17^th to come.

First appointment

Saturday, Oct. 9th, 2010

Terri sat on the examination table looking more frightened than I'd ever seen her.

"I'm afraid to have a mastectomy, but I'm afraid NOT to," she whispered hoarsely.

Terri's husband Paul, Deb, Mary and I were crowded closely together in the examination room while Dr. Janet Grange., the kind, attractive breast cancer surgeon, stepped out to retrieve Terri's pathology report.

"Wait for Dr. Grange," I whispered.  "She'll help you decide."

It wasn't by accident that we were here.  Paul's brother-in-law Steve was a prominent Omaha neurosurgeon, and his wife Shari was a cancer survivor herself.  I'd taught them both years ago at the little Catholic high school in Grand Island where all my younger brothers and sisters had attended school, too.  Steve and Shari were two of the finest people I knew, and it was because of them that Terri was here.

"All right," Dr. Grange breezed back into the room.  She scanned Terri's report quickly and looked up with a confident smile. "You have," she said, "the best kind of breast cancer you possibly could.  Congratulations for being so diligent about your yearly mammograms," she said.  "You saved your life."

We all heaved a collective sigh of relief - all but Terri who still sat tensely with that hunted look.

"Because your cancer is so early," Dr. Grange. tried to reassure her, "you're an excellent candidate for a lumpectomy with radiation.  I see," she bent over the report again, "that your mother had breast cancer?"
She looked up with a question.

"She did," Terri said.  "She died when we were young."

"Oh," Dr. Grange studied Terri's face.  "Well, now it seems we may be talking about something else.  Young women who watch their mothers die of breast cancer sometimes have emotional issues with a simple lumpectomy.  How are you feeling about it?"

My sisters and I stared at each other.  Nobody had ever told us that our irrational fears about Mom's death might not possibly be so irrational after all.  Every yearly screening was torture.  As soon as we set the appointments for our mammograms, the dark clouds settled above and followed us morning, noon and night.

"People tell me all the time how much they look forward to summer," Terri said flatly.  "I hate summer.  Summer means my mammogram."  Now she drew a long, shaky breath.  "I'm thinking about a double mastectomy," she said to Dr. Grange.

For the better part of an hour, we listened and asked intent questions.  And afterwards, on the way home in the car, Deb asked the question.  "What do you think, Ter?"

Paul, who was driving, glanced at Terri sideways.  "I think she's made her decision."
Terri nodded.  "I'm having the mastectomy."

Just like that, we all felt better. A plan was in motion, and Terri would defeat this thing that held us all hostage.

We talked over the possiblities of reconstructive surgery at Arby's over lunch.  For some reason, Terri was remembering the odd man who had been their next door neighbor when their oldest children were young.  She and Paul had gone to great lengths to keep their kids away from him.  He'd plastered pictures of bare-breasted women all over the walls of his house which could be seen from the outside windows.

"Maybe I'll go back after my reconstructive surgery to pay him a visit," Terri joked.  " 'Wanna take a picture of these, Buddy?' "  With a drunken leer, she pretended to rip open her shirt.  " 'Don't have my nipples yet, but they're on the way!' "

We screamed with laughter.  Terri's wicked humor had been locked up for a long time, it seemed to us.

It was good to have her back.

Losing Mom

Friday, Oct. 8th, 2010


My mom was beautiful. I’m not just saying that. Everybody thinks his or her mother is beautiful. But mine really was. It must have been a shock for her to be an only child and grow up to be the mother of ten kids. But to see her, you’d never have known it. She was always slender and gorgeous with big dewy brown eyes and cheekbones to die for.

She used to sit at her piano and play by the hour. My baby brother Tommy would lie in his playpen and doze in the sun while she played. I would cuddle up to her shoulder beside her and sniff the Avon scented candle on top of the piano, and I would watch her beautiful hands glide across the keyboard.

As the oldest, I didn’t get Mom all to myself very much of the time, so I savored that time at the piano. As a matter of fact, I inherited my mother’s piano, and it sits in my living room with that same Avon scented candle on top of it. Would you believe it? That candle still has its scent after more than 40 years. I’m sure it’s a little sign from Mom. I’m a big believer in signs.

She was 45 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it was so unthinkable, we couldn’t for one second entertain the thought that she could possibly die from it. But she did. Only three years later.
Our huge strong father was in denial. We were all in denial. My youngest brother Jeff was only 7-years-old, but I was 23. I should have been old enough to figure it all out. But I didn’t.

One day, when Mom was in the hospital, I moved back home to help out with the younger kids. Walking through my mom and dad’s room, I discovered my youngest brother Jeff in the bed half asleep hugging Mom’s pillow. “Mommy,” he sighed. I should have picked him up then and there and comforted him. But instead, I went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and cried. It wouldn’t really happen, I told myself.

She died in April, 1979. Terri was 12-years-old, and she cried so hard at Mom’s wake that Aunt Patty had to take her out of the funeral chapel. It’s hard enough to be 12-years-old without looking at your mother lying in a casket.

Now that Terri has breast cancer, I think of that time in our lives. One day, a month or so after Mom died, Terri came to me with her face full of fear.

“I think I have breast cancer,” she said.
It would have been laughable had we not all been so raw with grief.

“You don’t have cancer,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears. “I do. I have a lump.”

I examined the lump. “Terri,” I said, “it’s a bone. Everybody has it.”

Her small face crumpled in relief, and she smiled for the first time in days.
It was good to be the big sister and take that horrible worry from my little sister.

More than 30 years later, I'm still her big sister.  But I can't take her breast cancer away.

Terri's news

Before Christmas, I will have lost my breasts.

It’s the first time I’ve written those words. .

Deb and Mary, my younger sisters, will also lose theirs.

None of us is sick. Not yet. But Deb has atypical hyperplasia, two little spots of precancerous cells.

It was not even two months ago that our 44-year-old sister Terri was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she had her biopsy in early July, I told her not to worry. We’d all had biopsies, and it wouldn’t be anything. Even the radiologist in Lincoln told her not to worry.

“Go home and enjoy your 4th of July weekend,” she reassured Terri.  But the next Tuesday, Terri called me from the WalMart parking lot.

“I’ve got it!” she sobbed.

I waited for her to tell me it was a joke. Terri’s good at fake sobbing. But none of us would joke about this. Somehow I was standing in the corner of our dining room by the big potted plant not recalling exactly how I got there.

“Terri,” I finally said, “tell me exactly what they told you.”

She struggled to pull herself together. “I have to see the doctor this afternoon. The nurse wasn’t going to tell me!” she fell apart again. “But I told her, ‘If something’s wrong, you tell me now!’ She finally said it was breast cancer.”

It’s a hard thing to be 90 miles away from your little sister when she’s just received news like this. Terri’s tall and beautiful and the mother of six kids. But in that moment, she was my baby sister with her fluff of yellow hair and her gap-toothed smile. And I was an hour and 15 minutes away.

“Have you called Paul?” I asked.

“Yes,” she breathed raggedly. “He’s meeting me at home. But I can’t go home and tell the kids!” The sobs started afresh.

We prayed on the phone. At least, I prayed. I’m not much of a phone pray-er. But Terri and her husband Paul are the most devout Catholics I know. I’m a good Catholic myself, but I like to do my praying at Mass or on my Rosary beads. Terri, however, will clasp her hands in a restaurant and say grace right then and there. So I prayed for her, and she stopped crying.

She called again after her doctor’s visit, and I heard the overwhelming disbelief in her voice. “Invasive ductal carcinoma,” she read to me from the biopsy report, “and another spot of D.C.I.S.” I scribbled it all furiously on an envelope. Later, I would google it all.

“The doctor said it’s early,” she said.

It was a glimmer of hope.

And it was the beginning of losing our breasts.