#52Ancestors #Week23/24 - Health and Hard Times

 Elsie

 Margaret

 And Heather.

The tattoo on my left shoulder names the first two ladies, and I didn't think my own name needed to be included because it's already on my own body. Tulips, for our Dutch heritage, and nothing else but my grandma and great grandma's names.  A tiny dab of lavender-purple, a color that Grandma loved.

Grandma was about 75, and her mother Elsie and I were closer to 50 (her exact age unknown) when a doctor called and told us that we had breast cancer. The ubiquitous "they" are correct when it's talked about how there is both a before and an after with cancer. The before and after is apparent even today, when a friend bumped into me and apologized over something inconsequential.  The small, everyday things really don't matter, or matter very little. This became apparent early on, since my diagnoses came during month 10 of the COVID pandemic. I don't want to isolate (any more). I want to live, to embrace life.  

But I can't write about my journey with cancer if I don't talk about it from a real place, and cancer never happens in a vacuum.  You belong to a family, and families generally have multiple people and situations and even other illnesses, and that's exactly what happened in our case. So many other things were going on, I was much more focused on what was going on outside and not what was happening inside me.  I've been on medication for 3 years now and it sucks, but for the most part I'm well.

For grandma, cancer came late in her life but I'm reasonably sure she wasn't done living it.  I remember joking with Grandma & Grandpa about her upcoming surgery and remember the whole family rallying to keep them company while she was in the hospital.

For Elsie, I know she had a mastectomy several years before her death, and as I understand it, she was healthy for a bit. She died in the spring of 1946 when my grandma was pregnant with my dad.  Other family, other things going on.  Elsie had two sons in town beginning their own families after returning from war, and her two daughters who had both moved far away.

One of the things I wanted during cancer, I couldn't have.  To talk to my grandma, especially. We now share an additional bond neither of us signed up for, and I so wanted to talk to her.  Though she's been gone for 20 years, I miss her more now.