No More Birthdays, Empty Chair

Living gratefully today, I embrace the sorrow of loss and the joy in love.

Today is my sister Mary Jo's birthday. She would have been 62. It will be two months ago tomorrow that she died of metastatic breast cancer.

August 15, 1957- June 16, 2019. That was the length of Mary Jo's foot race, her earthly existence.

Her presence remains, as vibrant at times as her big smile and her big heart. The threads she wove into my life and the lives of so many are lasting and deep. Sibling threads are especially endearing and indelible.

Grief comes and goes, ebbs and flows, sometimes expected, sometimes unexpected. Sometimes it feels like a churning and a trudging. At other times it feels like an unburdening and a peace. Peace because Mary Jo knows peace from her suffering. And sometimes this range happens within seconds.

I expected the grief to surface and flow today. It is very fresh and intense on this anniversary of her birth, still so close to the time of her death.

This picture captures the emptiness and loss. It is the chair she spent plenty of time in, sitting in her living room, in the last months of her life. The picture also brings a wistful smile because I remember one of the last times I saw her sitting in it. She had decided to end all treatment and was relieved by that decision. There was a calm letting go I sensed in her that day.



The last time I saw Mary Jo, as she lay in bed getting sicker and weaker, some of her last words to me were "I hope this doesn't happen to you." We both knew we were saying our final goodbyes. It was a profound experience, very heavy, but also one that I cherish being able to participate in. It doesn't always work out that way.

I am so very saddened and also angry that it happened to you Mary Jo, and that it happened to Janine, and 40,000 other victims of MBC in the last year. The fear lurks for all those I know with BC, and that fear resides in me. But it doesn't own me. Your fear didn't own you either Mary Jo. You kept going on your terms and you stopped treatment on your terms. You found peace. Rest it in now.

"How fast the foot race goes."

The foot race known as this blog will be back early next week.

Comments

  1. Thank you for sharing this with me. I feel and understand, dear, dear friend.

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