Cancer Memories of a Christmas Past

Christmas is my favorite time of year, but when cancer came to town it cast a long shadow.

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year, full of joy and traditions and family fun. This year I will be able to look across the table over bowlfuls of stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and see my daughter Adrienne smiling and laughing with us. It is an irreplaceable gift to have her here. Mostly because five years ago, I didn’t know if she would be.

Christmas 2019 was a rough one. Adrienne finished chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer in October of that year and she was a month out of surgery to remove her lymph nodes when we went to be with the rest of the family to celebrate. Her hair was a shadow on her head, her eyelashes and eyebrows still a hoped-for return in progress. She was staring down six weeks of radiation after the holidays and was trying very hard to enjoy herself, but I could see it every time I looked at her.

The face of someone who was experiencing all the emotions from the nightmare of five months of chemotherapy that she hadn’t been able to let in until it was over.

When she was in the thick of it, she was completely disassociated from the emotional context of what she was experiencing. I am not sure how anyone would do it without putting a lid on the fear and despair and grief. From the onset of diagnosis, her treatment path had been fast and furious. It felt like she was in the saddle of a runaway horse holding on for dear life, so she didn’t have time to feel all the feelings. But the feelings were big… VERY big… so once they started to push past the barriers, she had put in place she got bucked off of that horse into a dark abyss.

She had been very careful during treatment not to let anyone else other than me see just how bad it was. When we went for visits, we only went if it was an off week because she felt a little better and could manage the hour-and-a-half car trip and spending time with her young niece and nephew. She would play games and take them to the park across the street and for them, it was just their regular Auntie A. Even if it was exhausting, she could handle the fatigue until we got back to her apartment and then she would crash, hard, for a couple of days to recover.

When we were there at Christmas, though, there was not only the physical fatigue but the emotional exhaustion of suppressing her feelings for months. She needed to hide but there was nowhere to do it. She needed to let some of it out, but she was afraid if she let down her guard even a little bit she’d be crushed by the weight. She had needed some “normal” but as we baked and joked and wrapped gifts, she realized that she would never feel normal again.

And she was still so good at it that no one but me could see it. 

They would see her pour herself a drink before lunch and just think she was celebrating. They would see her curled up under a blanket in the corner of the couch and think she was just cold. They would watch her head upstairs early to bed and think she was just a little tired. They would look at her smiling face and not see the blank look in her eyes or the effort it took to keep up the façade.

But I did. And it broke my heart.

One of the things I am most grateful for this holiday season is that slowly but surely the light has come back into her eyes. There are still times when the darkness comes over her and she needs her mom to help her get through the day, but those times are much less frequent than they used to be. There is no forced laughter, no blank stares. There is genuine joy and wonder and connection. 

For those of you still in the darkness, my Christmas wish for you is that you read this and feel seen, that someone out there knows how very hard this is for you. I wish you to know that while it will always be with you it is possible to move out of the nightmare into a happier place. I wish you to get a glimpse of the idea that you can hold space for your grief and still feel joy.

Most of all, I wish you as Merry a Christmas as your current life situation will allow.

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