Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Four years ago on my Mum and Dad’s anniversary,
I was swallowed down under the sea.
A wave of emotional darkness crashed over me and my family.
It was a significant marker to that day,
Didn’t need another, but I got one anyway.
My doctor was concerned with the lumps in my breast which I presumed were blocked milk ducts. She told me to have a scan the next morning. So there we were, driving along wondering about things in our own quiet way, my husband and my baby daughter and I. Pavement’s “Range Life” was playing in the car as we parked at Mater Private. When we returned to the car about five hours later the song “Range Life” continued from the very same place we had left it. But so much had happened within those five hours. So many cycles of thoughts and feelings and resolutions to do this and that. And the tears I did cry. I held my husband’s hand in my palm and wept. Our world had upended but the song still sounded exactly the same way it did before those five intense hours.
I have never been afraid of much or believed in destiny. I have always believed in things turning out well. They always do because you adapt and make it so. This can’t be different. If I just keep one thought in my mind, turning it over, it’s that we grow forward. We don’t stagnate or turn back. We keep on moving. I am not alone here. People have done this before. My biggest hurdle to date was to be told I was infertile. I have two beautiful kids. I can be told all sorts of things and given all sorts of odds. Stage IV terminal cancer. I will rise and I will fall. I will rise again. My feelings dissipate and I will crumble, only to build up these thoughts again. Sand castles. Wave. Sand castles. Tsunami. Sand castles.
Four years on and I’ve done it again. I am here. Living and breathing after another occurrence of cancer. I am here because of many things. I am here because my Mum came on a boat from Sri Lanka with her family, dreaming of a better life, without fear of war as independence became a reality after years of British rule. I am here because my Dad’s grandma lived next door to my Mum and a blind date was successful. Cancer was not part of my vision of my future. But I do believe in the Buddhist saying that “pain is inevitable but suffering is optional”. Life is full of pain. I’m just focusing on that little bit extra I can squeeze out of life. My life took a nosedive into deep water, but even against the current, I am here.