Do You Even Cancer? The Chaos Chronicles: Oh, So THIS Is Happiness?

Oh, hello.

Rachel here.

You might remember me from posts such as "Some Tough Mothers", and "GTFO".

Please, please, hold your applause. I'm back with business.

If you're new to this blog (I just merged it), you can start from the beginning (and I profusely apologize for the swear words; they were coming from a passionate place).

Apparently, my last post was in September of 2016. MY, HAS THE WORLD CHANGED.

(Sorry for the caps, I had a lot of feelings about 2016.)

So. Many. Angry. Feelings.

For my "Do You Even Cancer, Bro" friends - it's so nice to return. I will tell you that Sharon is now 2.5 years post-op resection, with no signs of recurrence of cholangiocarcinoma!

She's also a mega-babe.

Killing it. Pun intended. Awk.

Our Eleanor is practically a grown up, coding and building chemistry sets, like a miniature Walter White (but, umm, without the cancer).

(Without the meth lab too, as far as I know.)

She is definitely the one who knocks, though.

And me? Well, I'm officially 117 days from being pinned. I have made it through 3/4 of the gambit of nursing school, with minimal psychological damage.

Continuing the Breaking Bad theme

And I could write paragraphs about Ed, and how valiantly he fought with assistance from Sharon for years, and how in the space of a week he went from fatigued to unresponsive to dying, surrounded by a wall of love from my brothers, my mother, and me.

I think it was the Tuesday before he died that my mother said he stopped eating. And, rather than forcing him and risking aspiration, she mercifully followed his lead. My brothers and I had all arrived by late Friday night - he died Saturday morning.

He had been in a steady decline, and he didn't appear to be in distress in those last 36 hours. I was so attune to the aspects of his dying and death; from his spiking temperature hours before, to how honored I was to be able to bathe him with my mother in the hour before he quietly, peacefully slipped away, to the very moment the light left his eyes.

I don't know about the concept of the "good death", but his transition seemed as seamless, as peaceful as one would want.

But I'd rather show you some of my favorite images from the last few years. These are the important parts: the totems we carry with us, the parts of us that are beautifully indelible.