The Energizer Bunny

It keeps going, and going, and going.

About a month ago I went home for the weekend. On a Friday afternoon I went to visit my grandma, Busha. We sat and talked while she ate her lunch and I ate some of her fabulous chocolate chip cookies. I stayed for a few hours, and then she sent me away with a bag of groceries she insisted I needed for school. I waved from my car with her standing at the front window, just like we had always done.

Three weeks ago, Busha was diagnosed with brain cancer. One week ago, they gave her a couple of months to live. And tonight, for about the tenth night in a row, I can't sleep.

Don't ask me why I am disclosing this information to you. It is extremely personal and hard for me to deal with, and yet here I am typing away. Some of it has to do with the ease with which typing comes. If I say it out loud, that Busha will leave soon, it sounds unreal. Like a line from a play or something. If I talk about it too much, I'll cry, but if I mention it casually...it's just not real.

Busha has the type of brain cancer that is what doctor's call "the worst possible choice of cancer." It is extremely aggressive and barely gives anyone a chance of survival.

It just keeps going, and going, and going.

I spent all of last weekend with my grandma. Watched her sit in a nursing home where she doesn't belong. She belongs back at her home, surrounded by family and friends. She sat in a wheelchair and listened to a visiting choir, not really knowing what was going on.

That is how fast this cancer acts. Three weeks ago she was fine. This weekend, I'm not sure if she will know my name. She spends a lot of time staring into space, making me watch her with the same far-off look that she has. My mom, her sister, and four brothers are probably taking this the hardest, but I can't get over it.

I know that all families suffer, and go through hardships. But I have never lost anyone...why did it have to start off so big? With someone that I really can't imagine my life without?

There was no way to prepare for this onslaught of bad news, and there is just no stopping it. Cancer rips through the patient, yes, but it tears families apart too. With sorrow, regret for times they could have, should have spent.

It keeps going, and going, and going.

I don't really know how to respond to this. I know people don't like to hear me talk about it, and it is hard to be a good listener all the time. I don't even really want to talk about it, because there is only so many things one can say. And so much that I can say that I really believe. In my mind, there are two Bushas. The one in the home that is sick and unknowing to her family, and that Busha that I will see when I go to her house; the one baking or probably trying to teach us a new polka dance.

This is one of the hardest times of my life, and I don't mean to sit here and complain and make this incredibly personal. But this seems to be my only outlet. I just don't understand. She has never done anything to deserve this. She lost a husband when she wasn't even 50, she had six children to raise on her own, and has helped with over 30 grandchildren. She went to church twice every week, and was the most faithful, sweet woman I have ever known. Why the HELL does it have to be her?

I keep praying for a miracle, that I keep assuming will come.

But it just doesn't stop.