Until recently, I was one of the lucky ones. I had never lost anyone particularly close to me to cancer. Not to say I hadn't lost people before. My Dad died from a heart attack when I was ten. My Step-father in a car accident when I was in my early twenties. And my son to a tragic accident when he was 8 months old. I've experienced loss. But losing someone to cancer seems to me to be different from all those.
I'm now losing a person I hold dear to my heart. An amazing woman who has touched so many lives, including mine, in special and profound ways. My pastor, Cherie Isakson, is dying from cancer. She is weak, confused, and sleeps most of the time at this point, and is no longer able to eat. It won't be long now, and her daughter and best friend are both here to look after her till the end.
Cherie was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year, underwent surgery and chemo, and all seemed well. She told us her scans had come back clear. Things were good, and then life carried on as usual. Cherie, as our friend Alison is fond of saying, is a woman who "Walks the walk." She lead us spiritually and also lead by example of the Spirit.
Cherie isn't just my pastor, she's my friend. She was always there when I needed advice, a shoulder to lean on, or even a car to borrow. If you needed her to be somewhere, she would usually find a way to get there. If she couldn't be there she would use her extensive knowledge of local pastors to help you. When my husband was in the hospital with his emergency surgery, she couldn't make it right away and sent a pastor she knows in our town to pray with Kevin before his surgery, and then made it over here herself afterward, and helped very pregnant me get him home. She opened her home to those that needed it, whether for a dinner or a place to stay.
But not to say she was perfect. She could be grumpy, particularly if people didn't make their commitments. She argued with people, and was a bit of a control freak. Also a planner, she didn't like doing anything last minute. She'd be the first to tell you she had flaws. Often admitted to them in her Sunday sermons. Human and flawed, like all children of God.
Cherie being Cherie, she didn't say anything when her scans started coming back with not so good results. I think she figured that so long as she felt good enough to work, that they were only numbers on a page. She kept all her commitments, went on a vacation, and was helping to plan bible school. Then within just two weeks, she ended up where she is now. To say that many of us at church were blindsided would be an understatement.
Living an hour away, I was really out of the loop and had no idea she'd been in hospital for a morphine reaction. When we stopped by to visit her a week ago after my doctor appointment, to find her in her den in a hospital bed, on hospice care and actively dying from cancer, was a shock, to say the least. It all seemed to have happened so fast. Only a week later, she is no longer able to see people or talk very much. I'm really glad we got to see her when we did. When she was still the Cherie that I know and love. When she could still banter, and laugh and talk with us as she's always done.
I guess that is what I find so awful about cancer. The deaths that I have experienced have all been quick ones. Sudden and abrupt crises that you deal with and then begin the process of grieving and moving on with your life. Cancer on the other hand, is a slow thing. Robbing a person of their body function and mind until there is nothing left and they finally drift off. When Cherie first told us she had cancer, and that it was a difficult one to treat, I knew that at some point we'd likely have to face this. But when things were going so well, it was so easy to forget that. So easy to pretend that things were all ok and that this stuff that's happening now seemed like it could be years away. And then, all of a sudden, it's not. Some cancers work fast and others slow, and obviously hers was working on her longer than any of us knew. But because she seemed so well, it all feels so rapid and sudden now and we all feel totally unprepared to deal with it.
Currently I'm dealing with it in the best way I know how. Since I can't do anything for Cherie, I've taken it upon myself to do things for those that are caring for her. Preparing food to bring, or using my church connections to make sure they get the things that they need while they take care of my beloved friend. Being there for my church family as much as I can even though I live an hour away. Kevin and I can't imagine going to church anywhere else. It's where we feel we belong, and to us it's worth the two hour round trip to do church on Sunday and to make sure I get there for session meetings, etc.
But now when I see all the things on TV and around me in my community about fighting cancer, I finally understand on more than just an intellectual level. Before, I knew that cancer was bad and while I supported folks in their causes against cancer by donating, etc, I was still pretty detached from what they were doing. Now? Now I have that gut wrenching, visceral reaction at the thought of the very word, cancer. I understand on a much deeper level what it means to lose someone to cancer. Now, I get it, and good Lord I wish I didn't.
I'm angry and sad in turns. It seems so unfair that a person so good, so filled with grace and so present in this world in all she did to help the poor, the mentally ill, the drug addicted, that this person of all people would get cancer and die when she's still in the prime of her life (early sixties). Sounding like my six year old, "It's not fair!". But my mother always used to say that life isn't fair. The older I've gotten the more I've understood that.
So many people do manage to survive cancer, which is so amazing. But when you're losing someone to cancer, when the end result becomes inevitable, you can't help but think, "Why can't they cure this one, dammit!?" Why can they cure some and not others? Obviously, I know why. I know that all cancers are different and all people are different. But I still can't help thinking that anyway. Why not just this one? Sigh...
I don't know how long Cherie has left, but in my mind she is really already gone. The Cherie that I knew has already been taken from us, and now God merely needs to bring her the rest of the way home. I comfort myself knowing that when she was lucid she was at peace with her situation, and at peace with God. All I can do at this point is pray for her caregivers, pray that she doesn't suffer, and pray for my church family who now have to figure out how we move forward without her.
I guess that is all any of us can do. But now I know, now I know what it means to lose someone to cancer.
Dawn
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