Celebrating

So I guess it was five years ago this week that my cancer was removed.  I see friends posting these occasions with pink ribbon banners like it’s a birthday party.  And rightly so, now that I think about it, marking a second-chance at life, a rebirth.  Definitely.

I was just at my oncologist’s office this past Friday, and she wants to see me every three months instead of every six. She scheduled a pelvic ultrasound.  After five years on Tamoxifen, uterine cancer risk goes up; and, given my circumstances, she wants to be aggressively careful. The only ultrasounds I’ve had have been to see our babies, so this was only anxiety-inducing and not nearly as fun.  But it was sobering to think about why I was lying on her table.

I remember bits and pieces about those early days.  I lifted weights hours before my surgery, knowing it’d be my last time for a few weeks, and I washed with my special surgical soap.  I was blissfully calm in the little pre-op room, fully intact and unaware of how permanently the next few hours would change my body.  I remember waking myself up from anesthesia by snorting and seeing Kim and Tom beside me.  I remember putting on my lipstick the next morning and sitting up to write some notes.  I remember hobbling around the airport to get my mom and shopping with everyone for six hours a few days later with drains dangling from so many parts of my body.  I remember how sore it was to move about on the couch as I tried to sleep, how I missed being with Todd in our bed, how I hated missing fall, and of course how chopped up I looked.  Funny how I forget so many things these days and yet parts of that experience from five years ago are etched so clearly in my mind.

And so while I know most women celebrate their pink anniversaries, the actual day just came and went without me even noticing it. And maybe because I still struggle with survivors guilt and the low-threat nature of my case that I feel like I don’t have the same right as others to claim it.

And yet it’s not like I can really relegate it to the back of my mind because I’m still living with it.  Within four days, I had three appointments related to it.  I’m still getting deep-tissue massage a couple times a month to deal with the scar tissue from the surgeries.  I’m still stretching my chest and back with my weights and big bouncy ball.  I still wake up from my sleep from pain when I turn from my stomach to my back.  I still try to hide from Todd and myself all the time and am so sad that things have changed.  I still mourn the loss of what used to be, and I continue to feel ugly and broken.  But yes, also alive and well.  And so, as much as possible, I really do put it in the back of my mind.  But my massage appointments come around pretty fast.  And every May and November I find myself in that familiar office downtown getting my breasts patted down by my oncologist, who assesses my lymph nodes and asks probing questions to be sure.  I take the little while pill with my others every night and refill my prescription at Target every month, so it’s still part of my life even as I try to pretend it isn’t.

And maybe it’s because it’s just one of a million things I’ve “survived” over the course of my life that I view it so nonchalantly.  Do I keep track of them all and declare each day of the year a celebration for every hardship I’ve overcome?  Good grief, I can’t even keep track of birthdays.

Is cancer the heaviest trial?  I think for many people, yes, probably.  But maybe only maybe.  What about a broken heart?  Who says that doesn’t have the potential to kill a person?  What about loss of a love or loved one or a dream or a life you thought you were meant to live? Admittedly, I’ve barely had any really hard things in life.  But not one of us isn’t jostled around and bruised just by playing in the game.

So while I’m beyond grateful for the five more years I’ve been granted, I simply don’t see November 4th as one of my most life-changing anniversaries.  I guess if I had to celebrate a cancer anniversary, I’d choose whatever day it was that we found out.  And more specifically, I’d choose the few minutes in our tiny bathroom when we just hugged and cried.  Because it was then that our lives really did change.  That was when I told Todd that it would all work out.  Even if I died or went bald.  This is the day I knew my faith—our faith—was solid.  I told Todd that if God thought our family needed to grow and this was the way He wanted us to learn and be stronger, then I could accept that.  I admitted I still secretly hoped it didn’t have to go that way, but I also told him I would be ok with it.  That is still one of my most tender memories of the whole ordeal.  And while I would never think of celebrating it, it is probably my most cherished.

I wonder if we all have days like this that are more worthy of celebration than the anniversary of something as big as a surgery to declare us cancer-free.  Making it through a surgery does not always mean that the cancers in our lives are gone and that we are guaranteed to live.  Because living is more than simply breathing and existing from day to day.  And the cancers we harbor in our hearts are far more debilitating and deadly than those that can weaken our shells.

Can’t we, instead, decide to feel victorious all along the way, with every step of progress we make?  Doesn’t it feel better to celebrate someone’s life and all she taught you and the love you shared rather than her death and your loss?  Wouldn’t you rather not worry about the actual day of your divorce and instead focus on the person you’ve become since?  It just seems more positive and uplifting to focus on the good that’s come of a sad or hard experience instead of letting a past date haunt us or define us.

I wonder if there are days far more meaningful than even our wedding days, for instance.  Maybe it’s several years in and you realize you’re more committed and in love than you were even all dressed up and fancy, oblivious to the hard times to come.  Maybe it’s the day you decided to stay instead of giving up, the day you decided to truly give your whole heart to your spouse, knowing what marriage entails and how hard it will likely continue to be. While I’m sort of amazed at how fast time has gone when our wedding anniversary comes around each year, honestly I feel like celebrating more every time Todd and I make amends and connect again after a tense upset.  I love the ordinary days when I’m aware of how far we’ve come and how much we’ve gone through and how close we’ve grown.  Those ordinary days feel triumphal.

People ask about our funny little house all the time. I suppose we could have a special dinner every year to commemorate the day we closed on it, but honestly we feel a deeper sense of accomplishment with each finished project along the way.  And what I celebrate even more is when someone tells me she feels comfortable here, that it feels like home, or that it just feels good.  No flooring or painting job comes close.  So no, the closing date means nothing; what our home has come to mean to us and how it’s been used makes me happier than even thinking about the day when we will finally own it outright 100 years from now.

Even birthdays are less significant than what happens between them.  I feel a lot of pressure to celebrate birthdays in an expectant way, and I’m always secretly glad when they pass.  And obviously it’s important that we acknowledge these occasions, for sure.  But I derive much more joy and feel even more celebratory in those ordinary times when we’ve come through the other end of a trial, when a child starts to say he loves us for real, when we see evidence of the person they’re becoming, when we overcome a misunderstanding, when I note what it really means to be a year older and wiser.  Those are the times when I feel victorious as a family and a person and like throwing a party.

While obviously I’m all in when it comes to acknowledging special days and wins, I think there is merit in noticing the small successes that happen in everyday life, in between the anniversaries.  I also don’t like being tethered to events, especially the sad ones.  I’d rather center my heart on what’s happened since and focus on the growth that it encouraged.

And so, yes, it’s a milestone, no doubt.  Five years is five years without finding more cancer.  And five years is five more years with my people.  I’m not saying it’s not.  But if all we do is commemorate a day and realize we aren’t different—and better—versions of ourselves because of it, what are we celebrating anyway?