By I once asked my grandmother
Why do bad things happen to good people?
She simply responded God gives the most hardship to the strongest people he knows.
Years ago
My parents fled a war zone
Left the sound of bombs and bullets
Braved the air land and sea
In order to come here
Build their homes from the soil to the sky
My parents are the strongest people I know
So when the doctor tells my father he has cancer
My father doesn’t skip a beat
Even though his heart has already skipped several beats
My father still wakes up in the morning
My father still goes to work
My father still takes care of us
Tells us to be strong, not let ourselves fall victim to this
As soon as you play the victim you have lost this fight
This fight is not worth losing
For four years
This cancer comes back
I don’t know how to tell my father that God is simply testing your strength
You are just too strong
You are being too strong for us
I’ve never seen my father cry, he did not shed a tear even when cancer came back and back and back and back
Then we get the news
He is cancer-free
So once my father’s strength levels
His heart counts every beat
Forgetting the ones it skipped over
He returns back to himself
We think of this hardship as over
Place the memories on the past shelf
Look forward to the future
But my mother is just as strong as my father, if not stronger
So when the doctor tells us our mother has cancer
You don’t want to be strong anymore
But this strength runs in your blood
So you don’t have a choice
You are simply reliving this moment you experienced exactly 4 years ago
A record player of your life rewinding and winding and winding itself tighter around your neck
As you hear the doctor’s words echo in your mind
you stop breathing
this diagnosis does not hit you like a train
crush you under its weight
or knock the wind out of you
You don’t need metaphors to describe pain you have lived through
The realization is in silence
Then there are questions
you look down at your lap, wringing your hands, while you cry silently
the doctor continues to speak
He tried to be reassuring, tells you “this is curable,” says “you’re lucky we caught it early,” says “I understand how you feel”
You hear him but you’re not paying attention
all you are focused on is biting down on your fist so they won’t hear you cry
All you’re hearing is your mother crying next to you
Your father answering and asking questions
we are beyond speaking and hearing at this point
For months you watch your mother
become a ghost of herself
And you are her reflection staring back not knowing what to do
We don’t know where to go beyond this point
We play connect the dots with each chemo session
Roll a die to reveal what side effect we will be bringing home today
Watching my mother go through chemotherapy is like watching summer turn to fall turn to winter
Except we never reach spring
My mother didn’t have anything to bounce back on
When my mother got sick it was as if everything and everyone knew
Our houses foundation began to crack
The windows stopped letting warmth in
Our lemon tree grew parse and fickle
Our house knew my sister and I were playing mom
We’d fix one thing only for it to be
A little crooked
Not salty enough
Or too slow
We didn’t recognize how many children my mother took care of besides us
Always taking every gesture for granted
And now she was only strong enough to gesture with her voice
all I can hear is people telling me
Be strong
You have to be strong for her
It’s okay to cry
Sometimes you just have to let everything out
If you need to help please ask
I’m right here for you
When you have been strong for everyone else your entire life
What’s left for you
When you have cried night upon night
What do you do when the grief swells but the tears fail to rise
No one tells you about the before or the after of cancer
Because you are stuck in the during the now the present
Cancer should be redefined from a disease to a state of being
You can never leave even though you never crossed that border in the first place
But my parents didn’t cross those borders all those years ago to be held back by this one
People are mistaken when they think strength gets you through the worst times in your life
It’s love, it’s humility, and it’s resilience that helped my mother cross that border
And enter her journey of healing
healing starts and ends with you
But it can’t start unless you take the first step
So she did
And we did
So we choose to heal
And our lemon tree grew
The cracks in our house became smaller
On that day I call my grandmother
I tell her I know who the strongest person is
I tell her to thank God for me