Gratitude for Survivors

A few posts back I had an “acknowledgments” section where I thanked people. Even at the time I knew it was woefully inadequate. I tried to think of people who did very concrete things for me, but there is no way to thank all the people who have supported me with cards, letters, care packages, phone calls, e-mails…

I can never thank my sister, Kathy Becker, enough, for coming to stay with me three times from Seattle and taking such good care of me. Or my parents for making the trip to South Bend and the trip to Chicago possible and providing constant care and support.

But I do want to publicly express my gratitude for three other women. All three are women I primarily have connection with through Facebook. Two of them I have not seen in person for over 25 years.
I am so grateful to these three cancer survivors: Mary McDowell, Kim McDonald Butler, and Anne-Marie Hoskinson. I met Mary at speech camp in high school, and we stayed connected a surprisingly long time and reconnected through a mutual friend a few years ago. I met Kim through Grinnell College alumni connections at reunion two years ago. I knew Anne-Marie only slightly at Grinnell when we were there, classmates, though we’ve bonded a lot on Facebook over Minnesota, gardening, cooking, canning, etc.

Anne-Marie seemed to know what was happening to me before I fully did. I had posted something about thinking I had pneumonia, and for some reason she followed up with me privately. She and I texted and e-mailed back and forth the week before the diagnosis and the week after. I don’t know how I would have made it through that time without her. She talked to me at length and in depth about her own cancer experience. She let me know that no matter how bad the news was, it would not be the end for me. That time before we “had a plan” was by far the hardest emotionally, and somehow she knew what to say and was in contact all the time.

Mary, Kim, and Anne-Marie all have a strength and even a pride at having gone through chemotherapy and recovered from cancer. They embody the title “survivor.” Suddenly Kim Butler’s love of life and embrace of experience, her eagerness to go places and do things, made a lot of sense to me. The tone of her communication when she said that one mother at her son’s school didn’t even know she had cancer, just thought she was stylish in her head coverings choice, made me feel more confident about my own scarves and the possibilities there. Her trips with her family, her love of the lake where she lives, and her energy and engagement, are all inspiring to me. She once drove pretty far out of her way to meet me at a restaurant in Wisconsin, and another time drove a very long way to be at an afternoon picnic at my house. Now I felt I understood more her value of cultivating relationships.

Mary is one of the most important women in technology in this country. She right away started e-mailing me, sharing her experience from more than 20 years ago, tough times and set backs, as well as her food cravings, in a way that let me know that no matter what happened, I would get through it and be OK. She wrote to me about ordinary things going on in her current life, too. I could do more than look at her photos on Facebook and follow along– she wrote to tell me simple things and invite me to visit her next time I’m in New York.

I loved all the updates and contact I received through e-mail and snail mail. As I told people who visited– cancer is pretty boring. There isn’t much going on for me but following the wave of treatment and recovery. The important thing is just to know life is going on out there and I’m still connected to it.

They all let me know, right from the start, that this is something that happens and people get through it and move on. In fact, they let me know that I would be joining them in a special place, that there would be blessings and there would be strength. I would amaze myself. And really, even on the way home from the first oncology appointment, I felt that indeed: “I am up to this.” In fact, I may have said to Steve: “I’m going to be good at this.” I will be able to look with a clear eye and do what is required and I will tell others. There is purpose here.