Pink Fountains and Windy Days
I recently took my girls to visit some of Kansas City's Pink Fountains (they are pink in October for Breast Cancer awareness). I watched the girls laugh and play as their blonde hair blew in the wind... and I remembered another windy day...
It was Mother's Day, 2000, and I'll never forget watching hair blow in the wind that day...
Ten years prior, in 1990, we lost my dad's mother to Breast Cancer after a very long and difficult battle with chemo treatments, wigs, and scheduling holidays and visits around Grandma's energy levels. In her final years, she would take me shopping for outfits and each year her energy was less than the year before with more rest stops at benches and her suggestion that we watch a movie instead of walk and talk (she needed to rest and simply couldn't continue walking as she used to do). On those trips, I learned about my grandmother's childhood, meeting and falling in love with my grandfather, her career, and her love for me and my family. I'll always cherish that time and in 2000, I was scared that I may be bidding farewell to another grandmother due to Breast Cancer.
And so on Mother's Day 2000, I remembered Grandma H... the pain was deep and fresh as I watched my mother's mother now face Breast Cancer. It is a day I will never forget. Grandma was starting to lose her hair because of the chemo and it was painful, so she asked if my aunts, my mom, and I would help her comb out some of the loose hair because she was experiencing pain at the end of each hair follicle. As generations of women gathered around Grandma outside on that windy day, we slowly combed piece after piece of hair and watched it blow away... until finally... there was none left to comb.
As I watched my girls play at the fountains, I wondered if they would ever experience the same loss with their grandmothers, myself, or... would they someday battle cancer?
Cancer... it is one of my least favorite words. It has taken two of my grandparents, and put up a fight for both of my other grandparents and even a bout of skin cancer for my dad. Now, almost ten years after that windy day, my grandmother is, by the Grace of God, cancer free. But, cancer continues to be a forbidding and scary disease for our family. Five years ago, I spent my grandfather's last days in the hospital, watching leukemia take a life that was once vibrant. A couple years ago, I received a phone call that my other grandfather had cancer... he is now cancer free.
I don't know what the future holds for my family or my children, but the thought of cancer is always there. I do know though that we serve a Heavenly Father who has a bigger plan and I'm clinging to the knowledge that His plan is greater than my fears and my imagination.
Luke 12: 6 - 8, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies ? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God."