June 28, 2006

The Game of Life

When I was younger, I loved to play the game Life. It was so cool to pick a car and load it up with kids while collecting money. I’d name my little pink and blue pegs and travel along. At the end of the game, you would count your money and retire. There was never any talk of death. It was one of my favorite games.

In Junior High, we used to pass around things called "slam books." They had page headers/categories in them like: what kind of car you want, who you’ll marry, what you want to be when you grow up, where you’ll live, what kind of house, etc. etc. You would fill them in and pass them to the next person. My responses usually went something like this:

Car: Porsche or Lamborghini

Marry: I don’t remember but I think I probably said the guy from Growing Pains, Rick Springfield, or Vanilla Ice (depending on the year).

Want to be: Rich

Where to live: Beach

Kind of house: Mansion

I was firmly rooted in reality, don’t you think? My responses were always so practical. Kidding aside, I honestly believed when I was younger, that if you wanted to be rich. . . you would be rich. If you wanted to live in a mansion. . . someone would just give you one. I grew up middle class, so I’m not sure where I came up with these ideas. I watched my parents work hard for what we had. I also thought that bad things, like car accidents and illnesses, happened to other people.

My Great-Grandfather was the first person I knew who died. I went to his viewing and funeral and remember having nightmares for a while afterwards. His death was like such a smack in the face to me. It made me realize that death could and would happen to people I knew. Later my instrument teacher passed away. He was elderly as well, so in my mind, death only happened to older people. It put the worry to rest for a while.

When my aunt died who was in her 40’s, I was devastated. She died after being sick on and off throughout her life. She was young though, compared to the other people I knew who passed before her and it really upset and scared me. Still the 40’s seemed so far away from where I was at the time. A chronic illness and death still seemed like something that happened to other people, older people.

Then I got a terrible phone call. It was last May 2005. I was pregnant and knew that our friend Sheree was due in June with her second baby as well. Sheree’s husband, Conrad, was my husband’s best friend from high school and our mutual friend in college. He was the best man in our wedding. The call was from Shelley, a high school friend of my husband and Conrad. Sheree had been complaining about not feeling able to breathe. She went to see her doctor. They told her it was just the baby pushing up on her lungs, and that the baby was fine. Later that week, she went to the ER when things didn’t get better. From there, they transferred her to a special Mom/Baby hospital. Her lung had collapsed. After a CAT scan and other tests, it was determined that something was very wrong. They delivered the baby a month early. (The baby would later endure open heart surgery for problems that he had.) They sent Sheree to yet another hospital. The diagnosis, after her doctors obtained a second opinion. . .cancer.

Synovial sarcoma is what they determined it to be. It’s a rare cancer with a poor prognosis. Usually, tumors appear in joints, knees, elbows, shoulders, etc. Hers appeared in the lining of her lung and was already stage IV. After chemo shrunk the tumors a bit, they removed her lung. We were all thinking she would get better. None of us knew what stage her cancer was. She endured radiation, more chemo, experimental treatments several states away. . . and nothing worked. The cancer continued to spread; she continued to get sicker and sicker. This past Friday, June 23rd, she passed away.

Their children are ages 6 and 1, practically the same ages as my girls. She was 29 years old. She died exactly five days before she would turn 30. Yesterday we buried her; today is her birthday. She won’t see her children grow up. She wasn’t even been able to be a mother to her 1-year old during this past year of barbaric cancer treatments. She had been too sick and too weak, her mother tells me, to do anything other than watch him grow and play, knowing she wouldn’t be able to for much longer.

I can not imagine having been in her shoes. I can not imagine being faced with not being able to watch my children grow up. Clearly, you can not choose how long your life will be or how it will end. What you can choose is how you can live your life while you’re here. Knowing what Sheree went through and what her family is going through now makes me so thankful for my healthy family; It makes me sick to think of what they have yet to endure. I only wish that the game of Life would have had a very different ending for Sheree and her family.

I am so sad about Sheree as many others are as well. She was a vibrant young mother who loved her children and husband so much. I have some great memories of being at weddings with her and her husband, and spending a week at the beach with them as well. She was always so focused on having "family time." My husband and I were talking about her the other night and about how it’s almost like she knew she wasn’t going to have all the time in the world with her family. She wanted every second to be time spent together. She was so focused on her family that a month before she died, she planned her daughter’s birthday party. Because she didn’t know if she’d be there or not, she made sure everything was taken care of. Her family had nothing to do other than show up. Her birthday party was Saturday, the day after she died and it went on as scheduled. She also made a list that she gave to her husband. It’s a list of things that she wants him to do with their children as they grow up. The first thing on the list was to buy their daughter a bike and teach her how to ride. He took their daughter to the store on Saturday morning and bought her that bike.

I have so many regrets. Sheree and I had been friends and we lost touch over the past few years. We always sent Christmas cards and wrote each other a letter each year, but her email address changed after our beach vacation and our communication went downhill from there. Sheree and I were a lot alike when it comes to our children and families which is what has made this hit particularly close to home for me. I sent her flowers when she was in the hospital. I sent her cards telling her I was praying for her. I sent her a letter telling her I was thinking about her and telling her some information that had been passed along to me about energy healing. I sent her a hair wrap when chemo robbed her of her beautiful long hair. I sent her daughter a jewelry making kit so that she could make her Mommy a bracelet; I sent her baby an outfit. But all I can think about is that I wish I would have called her. I called and spoke to her Mom; we spoke to her husband. I should have asked to speak to her. Honestly, I was so afraid to call her in the beginning. I didn’t know what to say to her. She had just been diagnosed with a rare cancer. Her baby was sick as well. I didn’t want her to think I was only calling because she was sick. I was feeling guilty that I made it through my pregnancy with only gestational diabetes, and that we had a healthy baby. So, I didn’t call. When I said my final goodbye to her yesterday, I closed my eyes and said that I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend, but that I was going to make it up to her by watching over her husband and children, and trying to help them get through this however I can.

I’m going to pray that Sheree now has peace. I’m going to pray that her family gets through this. On the night she died, her husband said that all of the things he once thought were important, aren’t really important, that the small things do matter. He is so right about that.

I hope that wherever Sheree is, she knows how much she was loved, how much she’ll be missed, and how very sorry I am.