Moms, Dads, & Diagosis

I have not nor will I ever have the chance to be a mom.

Of a human child that is. I realize I proudly own every sweatshirt, hat, and keychain that says, “proud dog mom” on it. In that case, I’ve been a new mom six times and loved every furry four-legged addition to our house. I also am grateful for Mark’s willingness to embrace the chaos of such a furry family and make it our own. *For clarity and to temper your thoughts that I am the crazy dog lady, we have only ever had four at once. I realize that last sentence didn’t help my case. For what it’s worth, the Ballou-Bonnema Dood Ranch is currently full. 

Now, we have friends who have so graciously embraced us as parts of their families and there’s no greater love than the love I feel for their littles. Or, not so littles as with every breath it seems ten years pass. Time and milestones I never thought I’d witness.  It’s one of life’s greatest gifts - to watch those you love become parents. It also is one of the hardest. Not because I still imagine what Mark and my life would have been like had we experienced having a baby placed in our arms for the first time, but because I see how difficult it is to be a parent. It’s the most important and most difficult job there truly is. It’s always been my greatest hope that our friends who are parents know they are not alone in this journey. That they are seen and loved for who they are and we love their littles because of them. 

I feel a lump form in my throat as I imagine my best friends holding their children for the first time. A moment I can only imagine. One that nonetheless causes tears born from grateful beauty to fill my eyes. In that very moment I imagine the world stands still because their world is right before them - filled with a realized hope and endless possibility. 

The hardest people to tell that I had cancer? 

My parents. 

No parent wants to hear that their child has cancer, but sharing this news with my parents seemed to represent so much more. It represented a devastation paired with unrelenting realities that I can only begin to imagine as a parent. 

My parents are no strangers to pain and loss when it comes to their children. Most of my childhood was spent watching them bear witness to the unrelenting realities of having not one, but two children with CF. How do you give your children the world when it seems the only world they will ever know dares to be stolen? I think about my parents holding my brother and I for the first time and my heart hurts for them and how such a moment of peace, possibility, and potential would be shattered. 

Twenty-six years ago this week my parents lost their first child to cystic fibrosis. There had been many moments during his brief seventeen years which were thought to be his last only to have his tenacity, vigor, and strength pull him out of the clutches of death for a bit more time. It makes my stomach churn thinking about what my parents endured every time this happened. Not only watching your child be a slave to a merciless disease but to watch them fight for every breath repeatedly has to be helplessly devastating to the heart and mind. Whether a protective mechanism or one of mere coping, I have trouble remembering much of my childhood. I do, however, remember the faces of my parents as we gathered next to my brother for his final goodbye. Nate, with labored breath, was the calm to CF’s tormenting storm. But the pain woven within the creases of my parents' faces, that’s unforgettable. I still see them today and I still see Nate's face as he did his best to console their pain.

Much of who I am today is because of bearing witness to such pain. I do my best to shield anyone I love from such hurt, but most of all my parents. I cannot begin to fathom losing one child let alone knowing the likelihood of losing another to the same disease. But, then came a morsel of hope - one in the form of three tiny pills that seemingly lifted the heaviness of death from every breath. (Please feel free to read my blog entries about the life-changing drug “Trikafta”.) There was a hope, whether naive or not,  that my parents could be freed of knowing such devastation again at the hands of CF. For now, it seemed as if we had time. That I didn’t need to be that silent burden bearing down upon the hearts and minds of my parents. 

In that too familiar of a hospital room reeling amidst the unfathomable news of cancer, I couldn’t help but think of my parents and how I could possibly tell them. All I could think about was how unfair it all seemed to be. How brutal and unimaginable for them.

They were my last phone call and one I couldn’t do alone. I couldn’t keep the tears from flowing as I told them in broken words between uncontrollable sobs that their daughter had pancreatic cancer. Mark, gripping my hand, would interject in strength and poise as I seemingly tried to grapple with the pain I was unintentionally unloading onto my parents yet again. The only words that I could say was, "I'm sorry." I imagine in the 1980s what the words and diagnosis of “CF” felt like in the lives of my parents. It was deadly in many ways, to say the least. Like a bomb exploding amidst that perfect idealized family everyone is conditioned to dream of and strive to unconsciously emulate. 

That morsel of hope we’d known for the last few years? I just dropped a bomb on it. Again. I can’t help but imagine them holding me for the first time and dreaming of all of life’s grand possibilities. My reality is one a parent should never have to know, let alone dream for their child as they hold them within the hope of their arms for the very first time. 

I can’t change the reality of CF or cancer but I can promise that they will not suffer at the cost of my truth. I have been blessed with two sets of parents plus my wonderful in-laws. I hope they all know that the tenacity, strength, and gratitude I dare move through this journey with is one born from each of them and their love. That regardless of circumstances I could not do this journey without the person they’ve shaped me to be. And should my journey end sooner than we all hope, I hope that I leave them feeling most proud to have had me as their daughter. 

Hug your babies, the furry kind or human. Love to you all.

*Round 6 of chemo complete. 6 more to go.