Cancer: a love story

SMILING


I am simultaneously bored and busy. I think the boredom is really a result of being away from my home and the place and things that I love for one full month now. Or perhaps it is because I have been far more receptive than creative during this time. The busyness usually consists of lunch plans if I don't have some medical appointment.

Last Friday I was x-rayed and tattooed (which is how they "target" the radiation) in preparation for radiation this Thursday. I was told that while I would probably be tired as a result of the radiation I would not be too tired to go to lunch afterward. That's good. Priorities are priorities, after all! That night I went out to dinner with friends to Benardi's, an exquisite northern Italian restaurant in Cambridge. I was very, very grateful for every little aspect of the experience.

The following day my longtime friend and mentor, Sarah, drove me to Newburyport to attend Lucille's memorial service. As with her effervescent life, Lucille did not want a somber or traditional funeral. And it wasn't, thanks to Jeff's informal eulogy. He skillfully wrapped her entire life in the smile she bestowed upon everyone wherever she went. It was a generous and loving tribute to a strong and relentlessly positive woman.

Soon after I sat down in the funeral home, a lovely blond lady came and sat next to me. Her smile lit the room, the town, the universe for all I know! It is always astonishing to me to once again realize how truly loving relationships simply do not change. They are immutable. Period.

Neither discord nor distance seem capable of diminishing true relationships of the heart. You may be thinking of exceptions but I would suggest that despite the nature of the relationship it was not truly of the heart. Of course, as improbable as it may seem, I could be wrong!

In this instance, however, I am not wrong. As she had done innumerable times in the past twenty-five years, when I was first diagnosed she gave me the wise and wonderful benefit of her own experience. She told me that people would tend to respond to me in one of three ways. They would disappear altogether, they would be awkward and not know what to say or do, or they would know exactly what to say and do. She said regardless of the response it meant nothing and then cautioned me not to judge them. This advice remained extraordinarily helpful as I worked my way through recovery.

Now here she was sitting next to me smiling after almost two years of not seeing each other or even talking in well over a year. For no good reason. The not talking, that is. Smiling together with nothing in the way. Smiling in the knowledge of the hearts that grow and the relationship that continues to thrive. Smiling.

Perhaps in some inexplicable way it was Lucille's final smile.