Not Again

In the year 1943, Betty Smith wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and my sister, Peg, was born. This sister, the middle child, ten years my senior, is much like my mother was -- deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that is a center piece in the book, my sister however, has struggled with all kinds of odds to thrive. She has been maltreated by fate and also by people but plunged forward, indomitable, courageous.

I learned earlier this week that she has been diagnosed with lung cancer, once again just like my mother. The world started immediately spinning in a violent whirl leaving me with no place to jump off and grab hold onto a fix to the problem. As my stomach churns and my mind spins along with the earth I remind myself that the prognosis is good, better than good. I must place my trust in the insight of the surgeon to know this to be true.

The point is, what comfort can we provide those we love at a time like this? How many of us have felt this overwhelming inability to ease the fear of this treasured soul?

Words seem empty. My family's preference in times such as these has been silence and practicing the invisible. I can no longer remember why my parents were so close mouthed. And why my sisters chose to emulate this lonely way of dealing. I strive on a daily basis to remedy this familial mishap and believe that communication between loved ones testifies to the goodness of life and has for me become a repository of faith and hope. Without such, obstacles of this magnitude would simply be unbearable.