Grampa's stories always have happy endings

When my parents last came to visit, he was having headaches. He gets migraines occasionally but his usual medication for them wasn't working. He has persistent allergies and recurrent sinus infections but a thorough treatment for both of these didn't touch his pain. He is plagued by soft teeth and jaw problems, but a visit to the dentist and several crowns later and he was still clutching his head at regular intervals.

But he came anyway, that weekend in October, because it was Z's Grandparents Day at her school and he didn't want to miss it.

So he didn't.
He rallied. He and my mom watched her do a few of her works and ate the snack she brought to them. My dad gamely played Grampa Jungle Gym on the playground and just had to try out the kiddie bikes that go in a circle.

I wish I didn't feel the need to blur out the kids' faces because they are laughing their heads off.

By the end of the weekend, he was pretty miserable. On Monday, he found out he had shingles. On Thursday, he found out his cancer had returned, this time in his brain.

To say this hangs heavy on my heart, on my days, is an understatement. I knew that nothing in life is promised, that every day is precious and shouldn't be taken for granted. I knew that. I know that.

Cancer, I don't fucking need to be reminded of that.

By the way, I love to address my anger to "Cancer", like it's a person. Someone to be reasoned or bargained with, or if all else fails, to be beaten into submission. It's not, of course, and there is no reasoning or bargaining with this wily and vicious disease that has touched or will touch so many of our lives. But talking to it helps. Yelling at it helps more. The anger has to go somewhere.

He has completed his three weeks of radiation, battered, weakened but hoping to be victorious this time. When we went to go visit them two weekends ago, he was tired. But not too tired to tell Z bedtime stories, which, next to playing with my old collection of Barbies, is her favorite part of visiting my parents.

They are always princess stories and they always have to have happy endings.

The highly sensitive blogger

Well, howdy!

I've obviously been in the midst of a blogging hiatus. I've been writing, of course, but after blathering on for several paragraphs, I pause, highlight, cut, paste and save, somewhere else.

There are two reasons for me not blogging much lately. First, after a summer of profound and sudden loss, we, as a family, are struggling with many challenges, one of which is understanding temperament and personality traits that have always been present but have recently been exacerbated. Much of this is too personal to share here, because most of it is not my story to tell. The rest is below.

I've always known I am a sensitive person - I weep at any commercial with a dog or a baby and HEAVEN HELP ME if there is a dog AND a baby - but I didn't honestly give my temperament as a whole much thought. Reading "The Highly Sensitive Child" and "The Highly Sensitive Person" earlier this summer was like hearing a clarion call. Suddenly, the knowledge that I am "highly sensitive" colors everything I see and do and think about myself and the world around me. So many things make sense, pieces of me are fitting into a greater whole in ways I never previously understood. Even after years of therapy, I've been simply blown away with new self-knowledge.

This has been deeply unsettling. Add in the other person who shares my temperament and her recent challenges and you have a recipe for MUCH journaling but not much blogging.

The other reason for a blogging hiatus is this: a fracquaintance (we've been to each other's house for several meals but I wouldn't exactly call him up on the phone to shoot the breeze) has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that has spread to his bones and brain. (Googling the survival rates for his cancer right before bedtime was not my best move of late. [Um, HELLO, dingbat. Remember you're highly sensitive?]) He is 36 years old. He's never smoked.

He has a wife and two children under five.

I know this happens. I just can't handle it happening to people I know, to "young", healthy people. Fathers. Not after our summer. We were just getting over thinking and talking about death all the time.

It simply breaks my heart into millions of tiny, sad, angry pieces.

I keep trying to write about something else. But thoughts about these profoundly sad and difficult issues are all that come out.

Hopefully writing this will help clear my mind and make room for something else, ANYTHING ELSE, to think, and write, about.