And Beneath It All Was Love by Aime Card

The complete title for this memoir by Aime Card is “And Beneath It All Was Love – My Path Back Home Again Through Breast Cancer, and that is a perfect log-line for this very personal and relatable story. Sadly, but also fittingly, this tale will resonate with many women, partners, family, children and friends.

Anybody can write a memoir, but to write one as well as this one is difficult. Combining many events, with letters received and sent, painful experiences and emotions, mixed with relief and insights, Ms. Card’s book has the authenticity and articulation to describe not only what has happened and how it has effected her, but what is also difficult, scary, encouraging and supportive.

For example, here is a few sentences of her describing her state after many treatments for the cancer that she was living with. “I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and so angry at being pulled at. I can’t help you, I thought. I can’t even help me. All of my control had slipped through my fingers, and I was left floating free form in the dark void. I just prayed that someone had left me a rope.”

If you have had cancer, do have cancer or know someone who has or does have cancer, And Beneath It All Was Love will be worth reading. In it you will recognize yourself and others and the many ways in which we are unique and the same.

Here is a link to Aime’s website: https://www.aimecard.com/

Saving Their Homes

Dear MoveOn member,

President Obama could help twelve million homeowners struggling to pay their mortgage.

The president needs to hear directly from us.

Here’s the story: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hold 60% of mortgages—but the agency that oversees them is run by Bush appointee Ed DeMarco who refuses to allow underwater homeowners to adjust their mortgages to reflect the true value of their home.

Homeowners are struggling to make ends meet. And helping them not only means saving their homes, it will also stabilize the market and help get the economy back on track for everyone.

President Obama has the power to replace DeMarco and make sure Fannie and Freddie provide relief to the millions of Americans struggling with mortgage debt.

That’s why on Thursday, March 15—the same day the Senate banking committee meets in D.C. to discuss the fate of homeowners—we’re organizing big rallies at Obama for America campaign offices around the country. We’ll tell the president: We’re sinking in underwater mortgages—throw the 99% a lifeline to keep us in our homes. In communities without OFA offices, we’ll rally in front of Wall Street bank branches and homes threatened by foreclosure to let the public and the media know that the 99% is standing up to save our homes.

Will you host a Save Our Homes rally on Thursday, March 15?

Yes, I can organize an event!

In late January, MoveOn members organized events at OFA offices calling on President Obama to order a real investigation into Wall Street banks. Just days later, the president did just that! We know that when Obama voters and volunteers get together, the president listens.

Now, we need him to step up to help struggling homeowners. We’ll support him in taking bold steps—from demanding that Fannie and Freddie readjust mortgages, to replacing anyone who continues holding back the housing recovery.

Can you host a rally in Santa Cruz to ask the president to save our homes?

Click here to host!

Hosting an event is powerful and easy. Once you sign up, you’ll get the petitions from MoveOn members and all the materials you’ll need for a successful event.

Thanks for all you do.

–Elena, Laura, Sarah, Amy, and the rest of the team

Reading About Death

Excerpt from Good Grief: Love, Loss and Laughter.

How much information about dying, death and grief can we handle?

Jackie told me that after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer she was inundated with information, suggestions, advice and stories. She felt overwhelmed, confused and disoriented. Not only was she trying to make sense of the diagnosis and all its implications, she was also suddenly having to make decisions about what kind of treatment to choose, if any.

On top of such monumental choices, friends, relatives and health professionals bombarded her with written material on statistics, outcomes, recovery, remedies and self-help and self-care groups and organizations.

I asked her if she would rather have not had all the information and she said, “No, I’d rather it was there than not. It isn’t the information per say; it’s how it is presented. I want it when I ask for it, not when others think I need it. I want to decide which things I wish to research for myself and which things I’d rather have someone else look into. I want to have some control about what comes my way and how I process it. There is enough out of control in my life as it is.”

When I inquired as to how people would know when and how much to provide she replied, “Simply ask. All they have to do is ask and do so without judgment or ‘should’ attached to their question. Support offered when requested, without someone else agenda attached, is the best medicine.”

How may pamphlets, handouts, magazines and books can we read when we are taking care of a loved one who is dying or have just had someone die?

Brian took care of his wife (they’d been married for thirty-three years) for four and a half years until she died from complications of Alzheimer’s eight months ago. He told me that, “There were days when I could barely read the road signs, let alone an entire book. Taking care of Samantha took every ounce of energy and attention I could muster. One day a good friend of mine dropped off a little pamphlet about self-care. At first I didn’t think much about it and just appreciated his show of concern. But every once in awhile I’d sit down, pick the thing up and read a sentence or two and try to do what it said. It wasn’t anything monumental, but it helped me step back from my situation off and on and take a deep breath. After Samantha died I tried to read a book or two again, but found I couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes. I’d read the same sentence about three times before I realized what I’d just done. People gave me books about grief, but most of them were too big and intimidating. Again, it was this same friend who simply gave me a few handouts which had some common reactions and suggestions for coping with loss, which helped the most.”

Do the words written on a page help us prepare any better for the inevitable or make the process of mourning any easier?

When Francis’s mother was dying of congestive heart disease and came on to hospice services, the social worker gave her a handout that had information on a variety of topics (about hospice care, advanced directives, how to provide bodily care, etc.). It also included a page called “Signs of Approaching Death”, which provided information on what physical changes “usually” happen as the body begins to shut down. Francis told me that the information helped her think about planning (both health care and financial) a little sooner than she might have otherwise and that the section on Signs of Approaching Death were especially helpful.

“Not long after I’d read that page, she started to decline.” She explained. “If I hadn’t known those things ahead of time it would have been VERY scary. As it was, I was able to relax a little bit and not freak out when her breathing changed and she began to slip away.”

Francis echoed Brian’s reactions about reading books on grief after her mother died and added, “I don’t mind something more extensive, as long as I can keep it awhile and look at sections I need to, when I want to, then put it down and come back to it. The books have helped normalize my experience. They’ve let me know that many others have gone through what I’m going through and that I am not going crazy.”

Twenty years ago there were only about twenty to thirty books available about death, dying and grief. There are now hundreds. The disadvantages to having so many are the difficulty in knowing which are right for you and your situation and which are not. The advantage is that there is far greater choice, they are more accessible and you are more likely to find something that speaks to you directly.

Like Jackie said, “When in doubt, ask?” Find out what kind of information they are seeking and how much they want at any given time.

If something you’ve read has deeply touched you, changed your life, provided comfort, understanding or direction, the words will speak for themselves. You don’t have to sell your experience or convince someone who is confronting illness, death or loss that the words you found so helpful will touch them in the same way.

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My Sister’s Keeper

It felt like I had been hit by lightening.

“Gabriel,” my sister Candace said, with a voice that was close to breaking. “I have breast cancer.”

After a moment of stunned silence, not sure I had heard her right, I said something stupid like, “Are you sure?”

“They’re doing a lumpectomy and then they’re talking about radiation, chemotherapy and hormone treatments,” she continued, while I sat numb, listening on the phone to the litany of assaults upon her body that she was about to endure.

“Do you have to have all the other stuff after surgery?” I wondered out loud. “If it’s all in one area and they remove it, why do you have to still do everything else?”

“Just to make sure,” she replied. “The other therapies make it less likely that it will ever reappear and since I’m so young, with children, they don’t want to take any chances.” She paused and swallowed. “And neither do I.”

I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My little sister, the only biologically related sister I have (the other eight being foster sisters) and the one I’ve known since her birth, two years after mine, just told me she had a disease that she could die from. And, because I had worked at a hospice for many years, with people living the last months and days of their lives due to cancer and other diseases, my first reaction was that she was going to soon join the dead.

As if she was reading my mind she said, “The odds are really good that it will all work out fine, but I wanted to let you know.”

She was right, the odds for full recovery from early-detected breast cancer are very good and have continually improved over the last number of years, but knowing that didn’t help much at the time.

“Have they told you about all the side effects?” I asked, aware that, at least in the past, physicians and nurses sometimes minimized the amount of discomfort and reactions that can occur from chemotherapy, radiation and hormonal therapies.

“Yeah,” she said. “They told me about all the worse things that could happen. They said they had to tell me, even though none of them would probably occur.”

“Sure,” I thought to myself. “I’ve heard that before, then seen people get as sick and tired as an old dog and feel like the treatment was killing them worse than the cancer.” But, I couldn’t tell my sister that. At least I didn’t think I could at the time. I wanted to be hopeful and supportive so I said, “Good. I’m sure you’ll do great.”

She went on to describe when, how and what would happen and how she had discovered the lump. She said that in some ways it was a relief to at least know what it was and why she had been feeling so uncomfortable in that area.

I asked the usual questions. “Do you want me to come up and help with the kids? Is there anything I can DO?”

“No,” she said. “Mark (my brother-in-law) will watch the kids and work told me to take as much time off as I need. I’m a big girl now, remember.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I know, big bro,” she replied. “I love you too.”

I wish there were a switch we could turn on when we hear bad news, a switch that takes us immediately to hope meaning and compassion. But, more often than not, anxiety and apprehension are the first visitors that take me on a roller-coaster ride of grief. My first reaction to Candace’s news had been fear, but after her surgery was over and the treatments started, I began looking at our relationship in a different way and discovered how much I appreciate how close we’ve become as we’ve gotten older and had children of our own.

If there is any blessing or “hidden golden lining” in confronting and living through or dying with a life threatening illness, it must be the sense of presence and appreciation it can give us for the short lives we are living. It makes our mortality real and thus provides a container for the preciousness and value of every life.

Before Candace was diagnosed with cancer, she would have been the last person in the world to ever seek counseling or attend a support group. But, after her surgery she started seeing a private therapist and then attended a cancer support group. I was really taken aback when she first told me she was utilizing such support. As the months went along, she told me of the insights and changes that counseling and the group were creating within her and how she was realizing that she has far more choice in how she chooses to live her life than she had previously envisioned. I guess that’s what people mean when they say that having cancer was or is a blessing, because it helped them to “wake up” and live life instead of being a victim of life.

Luckily, after about two years of treatments, Candace was free and clear of any signs of disease and remains so to this day. I think she sees life differently now and has a deeper awareness, understanding and compassion for others. I have never taken her for granted, but ever since receiving that first phone call, when she told me she had cancer, I’ve appreciated and loved her more than ever and not only contacted her more frequently, but don’t hesitate in letting her now how deeply I care.