Surprise Loss

Inspirational song: It's Different for Girls (Joe Jackson)

The Friends of Smith Park Family is smaller tonight. I found out this afternoon that one of my earliest supporters has passed away. I don't know the cause for sure, but I have an educated guess. It's not a comforting thought to suspect what I do.

When I first got to know my next door neighbors at the Original Park, I had a difficult time connecting. They were all very friendly to me, to be sure, and I did everything I could to be a good neighbor back. But sometimes they asked for things that drained me physically and emotionally in ways I wasn't able to express in those days. I tried to do a little more yard work on our adjoining side than I really had energy for. And it seemed that for months in a row, whenever a certain one of them needed a little extra conversation, it was always on a day when I was completely out of spoons (not that I knew the terminology back then). Eventually we started to click, and the frequent conversations with the daughter of the family seemed more fun and productive. I don't know what changed for sure. Either my mind cleared a bit, or my neighbor's did. In the years since I moved away, she would read the blog, and sometimes she would comment or message me. We'd reminisce about how much we both loved living in those houses. (Hers was sold after her elderly mother died.) She really seemed to be thriving for a while.

The last year I was there, she called me crying one night. She had found a lump in her breast and she was very scared. I came over, and told her to get in my car. We went driving for hours, just talking about anything but the looming health crisis. She'd been through a lot of challenges by that point, and had struggled to find good doctors who would accept her insurance. We didn't talk about it much after that point, and not at all after I left. When I'd seen pictures on Facebook, she seemed to be doing so much better, truly happy with the man she started dating right about the time I moved away. I assumed that she had probably had a lumpectomy and had done fine after. Today I saw on Facebook where her boyfriend tagged her in a post saying she had died yesterday morning. I scrolled through scores of comments, looking for any kind of explanation. The only one that wasn't confined to "I'm so sorry" was someone saying he had lost his wife to breast cancer last year.

I went to the usual monthly sales meeting this morning, the last one for a few months probably. I let them know last week that I have breast cancer, and the owners of my brokerage have arranged for me to have a sabbatical of sorts while I go through treatment. While talking with one of my fellow brokers, I mentioned that I honestly thought because of my hyperactive immune system, I'd be impervious to this particular cancer. I have no idea why I thought that, but I really did. Even now, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously. They keep saying it was caught early, and in my head, just radiation and not chemo means it's barely even a thing. I'm probably doing myself a disservice by staying in denial so long. Once I come out of surgery, it'll be a rude awakening to discover it's all real if I don't let it through now.

I went digging through old blogs from the first summer to find a picture of the Original Park where you could see my neighbor's gate in the background. I planted so many flowers on that side where only they could see them. I'll put out some snapdragons this year for my old friend.