Two kinds of tears
Sad tears never came easily when Jane was alive. When you live in joy there is rarely anything that can make you that unhappy. Since her death, happy tears have come rarely. When you live in sorrow there is rarely anything that can make you that happy.
…sometimes I hear news that reduces me to joyous tears.
I have cried twice today–once for sorrow and once for happiness. That is the nature of the Extra Mile Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk Brunch, which I attended for the third time this morning. It is an event mixed of equal parts joy and sorrow for me, but this morning especially so.
Mother on a mission
Each year, one of the speeches at the event comes from either a patient or a family member. This morning, a woman who lost her son to cancer spoke. She lost her high school age son to cancer two years ago. I have seen parents crippled forever by that kind of loss. She, however, refuses to let her own pain stop her from helping others.
Since her death, happy tears have come rarely.
Her first Jimmy Fund Walk started at Dana-Farber. She walked those three miles with her son. They crossed the finish line together. A year later, she formed a two-person team with another mother whose daughter was fighting cancer. They called their team MOM, for Moms on a Mission. They walked 26.2 miles each and met their son and daughter at the finish line.
A new vocation
Her son’s struggle and death put her on a new mission that has sent her back to school to become a medical interpreter, so that parents who do not speak English can have an advocate to explain what is going on to them. She said, “Cancer speaks every language.” My eyes were already soggy by then.
They crossed the finish line together.
I managed not to cry when a woman I met by chance a year ago at the Brunch stopped by our table. We had talked about some symptoms she was experiencing at the time, and I had urged her to see her doctor about them. This fall they removed a substantial growth from her intestines.
Tears of joy
She has a son who was diagnosed several years ago with cancer. She had begun walking when he was diagnosed. Now she has two reasons to walk–and two reasons to fight. Tomorrow, she will get the test results that will likely tell her they got it all.
Cancer speaks every language.
It was only after I got home I gave in to the emotions I felt as we talked. I wept and cried and let the tears flow down my face.
Accepting the pain of joy
Joy is an emotion I fear more than sorrow these days. It rips through me in unaccustomed ways and takes me places I am not yet ready for my soul to go. Sorrow is a comfortable old shoe. Joy aches like a blister that I fear will break too easily into new pain.
Now she has two reasons to walk…
But I will take the joy, regardless of that fear–or any pain that may come with it. She has won more time to live, to enjoy her son, to do the things she loves. I am jealous of that–jealous of the time she has won that Jane and I did not get–but that jealousy also feeds my joy at her survival: We have stolen another life from cancer’s maw.
The potential joy of walking
People ask why I do what I do: why I walk through the night at Relay, why I put in the miles and miles of training, why I trek from Hopkinton to Boston for the Jimmy Fund, why I write this blog, present at that health fair, pursue knowledge of cancer down every blind alley.
Joy aches like a blister…
Every step, every chance meeting, every pamphlet or letter or piece of writing, may raise the dollar that saves a life or spur a thought that leads to some treatment or get some person who thinks everything is fine to ask the niggling question a doctor needs to hear. Each day is an opportunity to push the walls of death back another micron and gain another bit of life for someone without other hope.
And sometimes I hear news that reduces me to joyous tears. You come, too.
