Cancer $@#*ing sucks

...A sentiment that isn't new to many of you who read this blog, who've had a spouse, parent, sibling, child, or friend die of this horrible disease.

But I just got news this morning from a good college friend of mine that her mother-in-law--who'd been diagnosed with breast cancer only a month ago--died very suddenly and unexpectedly late this week from breathing complications. To make it worse, this same college friend's husband has been battling Hodgkin's lymphoma for the last 4 years, a cancer they were told at the beginning was highly curable...but one that has been horribly nasty for her husband. Chemo, radiation, two stem cell transplants, countless hospital stays with complications, and almost a year of remission before it came back with a vengeance two years ago, they've had very little good news or clear direction of what might work for treatment options. Greg's parents had been invaluable in his day-to-day care while my friend worked, so not only is their family reeling from the sudden loss of a beloved mother and wife, but it puts Greg's own cancer treatments and living with them into a maelstrom too.

I hate cancer. Another good college friend--the three of us have faithfully had brunch once every month or couple of months for the last 6 1/2 years--is going through the same thing. Her father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about three months ago...a cancer that is almost always fatal.

I know I'm simply hitting that phase of life where my friend's parents--or indeed my own parents--are hitting "that age" where heart attacks, cancer, strokes, and other fatal illnesses will start becoming the norm. But 33 still feels so young for my friends to start facing these things. And I can't deny that their news affects me differently than it does other people, because I know what they're going through. Different specifics and a different relationship lost, but I know what my friend's family is having to deal with right now. So it's never just shock and sympathy for them--there's a well of repressed shock and grief, of memories of things I don't wish to relive, that percolates to the surface for me when I hear the news. Because I know.

I think of what Janine (txmomx6) often says--there are no words. And I don't have words exactly for what this news brings up for me...but there are lots of feelings and emotions and memories. And as much as I hate that I have this insidious knowledge of sudden death, grief, and loss, I am grateful, at least, that I won't be one of "those" people...the ones that perennially say the wrong thing, who have no fucking clue. Just looking on my friends' Facebook pages and reading the comments of some of the people--"I don't know what to say"--reminds me that I'm not naive and innocent like I once was over five years ago.

I remember sitting at a restaurant table for brunch with these same two college friends almost exactly six years ago, in late October or early November while Anna slept in her infant car seat next to me, as this same friend told us how her father--a man she'd mostly been estranged from for some time, or, at the very least, had had a very complicated relationship with in recent years--had died, also suddenly and very unexpectedly while at his home several hours away. She told us the news several weeks after he'd died so her retelling wasn't fresh and raw for her, but I can still remember the exact table where we sat as she told us. And at that point in time, Charley was still alive and well at home, puttering around our house and doing chores, I imagine, on a Saturday morning. Raking leaves, probably, or doing laundry, or maybe watching college football on the TV. But it was the Old Me who sat at that table with her friend, the one who hadn't gone through the worst thing imaginable yet. Happily clueless but suitably surprised at my friend's news, it remained mostly a retelling of a story--not something that any of us really reacted to, other than being surprised.

But I'm not that person anymore. And my heart breaks for my friends--all of them--as they deal with their parents' cancer and deaths. No, I don't have first-hand knowledge of cancer, but from my own experiences of death and grief and the shared experiences I've learned from all of my cancer widow friends, I know way too much. All death is horrible.

But there's a part of me that also realizes just how sheltered and naive I was Before--before five years ago when Charley died and I started on this path of knowledge--because my own father has had cancer twice. Hearing my friends' news suddenly reminded me just how clueless I was when my dad was diagnosed--both times--and went through his treatments.

My parents were 37 when they had me and turned 60 right before I graduated from college. At only a few months past his sixtieth birthday, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. They told me the awful news the week before finals of my last year in college, and I remember how the shock and fear reeled through my body for the next few days as I struggled to process the information...and as I struggled to try to finish up my finals and papers to be able to graduate. My dad was laid off the first week of my senior year (and remained unable to find a job afterward), and he was diagnosed with colon cancer the last week of it--two things that bookended and cast a pall over the entire school year. He had a foot of his colon removed a week after my college graduation and began chemo or else radiation, and despite that he got the all-clear mark within a year of the diagnosis without further complications or failed treatments, he's had numerous complications from the surgery over the last ten years. Several hernia repair surgeries, another surgery and almost 3-week hospital stay 3 years ago from a 20 cm bowel obstruction due to scar tissue (women, think how big 10 cm looks when you're fully dilated for labor...and this was twice as big)...so while the cancer might have stayed at bay, his health still bears its harmful after-effects. Oh, and he had surgery and radiation for prostate cancer somewhere in there too. He was diagnosed with it when he was 64, and I went back the hospital when Anna was only a week old--sat in a hospital chair a floor above where I gave birth one week prior--to visit him after his surgery.

But I didn't live with my parents when they dealt with either of these cancers. I'd get reports and updates over the phone, but they were very insular reports...not too different from updates about the weather, my parents' regular doings, or anything else. Partially it was because of the way my parents chose to tell us things--sheltering their adult children and keeping it clinical and factual, I'm sure--but in hindsight, I can't believe just how clueless we all were. But then again, he beat it, both times. And there weren't failed treatments and endless complications, nor was there any hint of fatal to either bouts.

So as I hear my friend's news this morning, I think of many things. Pain for them, isolated flashbacks for me, and reminders of how sheltered and clueless I used to be before Charley died. I know news like this will slowly start to become the norm--and god forbid the time when I stop being the only young widow/er that friends my age know, and I start gaining unwilling sisters and brothers in this awful Widow Club--but it's still sad.

Death sucks.