Sad but Lucky, Lucky but Sad

A while back I blogged about a friend of mine whose year-old son has liver cancer. Today, there’s been bad news. He had been responding well to treatment and everyone was full of hope, but new scan results show that the cancer is back, and is worse. His doctors have stopped chemo and they are “weighing their options,” which I think means that there aren’t too many options left.

It’s such a terrible, terrible thing. I can’t even think about it without crying. How is it possible we live in a world where a one-year-old has to go through this kind of pain, this kind of treatment? What kind of world is it when parents and a four-year-old sister have to deal with this kind of sadness?

My mom used to say about me that I was born with a horseshoe up my butt, because I’m so incredibly lucky. (In case this makes you think less of my mother, you should know that this is just about the crudest thing I’ve ever heard her say.) It’s so true. My life is beautiful and wonderful and I am so, so lucky in every way. I have a great family and three happy, beautiful kids. Despite the Captain’s issues with food, his health is manageable and we have no doubt that we’ll get to see him and his sisters grow up into happy, beautiful adults. My husband is a great dad and takes good care of us. We can afford to eat and live in a nice house. We drink safe water and we can choose from a myriad of products at the grocery store.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

At times like this I feel like such a poser, blogging about my stupid little life issues, like when to wean the Little Miss and how to get the Gal to stop sucking her fingers. As if the disagreement I had with Sir Monkeypants this morning over whether or not to have some gravel delivered today or tomorrow is as important as someone’s child dying. We are so incredibly lucky, anything that I have to complain about seems insignificant, meaningless. There is so much joy here, so much to be thankful for, so little reason to whine and bitch.

I wish I could do something for my friend and her son. Unfortunately they live a plane ride away, so all of my concrete ideas for helping out at their house are impossible. Instead they will have to make do with my thoughts and prayers and all the love I can send them.

I just wish I could send them a little bit of my good luck, too.

2 thoughts on “Sad but Lucky, Lucky but Sad”

Something like this happening to a child really is the saddest, most unfair thing imaginable. And there are lots of terrible things happening to people all the time. I’ve thought about this issue a lot. And yes, things like this make you feel guilty for being upset or worried or angry about all of the less terrible things happening in your own life, but I think we should allow ourselves to enjoy things in our life that bring us joy and weep over the things that sadden or frustrate us in our lives that bring us stress. Despite the fact that terrible things are happening all around us all the time. We can’t measure our griefs and happinesses in comparison to others all the time — it would drive us nuts eventually. Of course, when something like this happens to a friend or family member we naturally put our lesser problems on the back burner, but otherwise we each have to feel and experience our individual lives, I think. Again, I’m so sorry about your friend’s child. You can always be at the other end of the phone for her to talk to.

July 21, 2008 at 10:33 am