Relay for Life

Relay for Life was today. I got to have really good baked goods from my team's bake sale and cry a little. I normally do well with death and talking about it but for some reason (I blame personal involvement) the death of my great-uncle to lung cancer hurt me more than any other. And believe me people in my family like to die. We get at least 4 or so a year. Sometimes less but even if you do go to the funeral you hear about so-and-so's cousin or that-person's brother dying. Half the time I don't know the person and even if I do it's become so passe. Odd, I just said that it's passe to die. But it's true everyone does it. With the exception of a few Biblical figures. Anywho, About my uncle. I helped take care of him even before he was diagnosed. After he was diagnosed people came out of the woodwork and decided to occasionally (maybe more often than that word connotes) help my immediate family take care of him. For my dad this was the second victim of lung cancer he had to help. Well not had but you understand. Last time it was his grandpa, my great-uncle's father. You'd think if your dad died of lung cancer from smoking you'd stop. Oh well. It was too late once we found out. It was odd, he really didn't have many symptoms from what I could tell. A cough then a few x-rays later and oh, you have a large cell carcinoma in you lungs (I forget which type precisely otherwise my sciency brain would have compelled me to put here for you. It's too late to find out now, my mom threw away the paper a little while ago.) It took a while for him to really begin to show the pain. Once he couldn't hide it any more he seemed so defeated. It's really hard watching someone you care about lose all of their dignity and self-respect because they feel they are a burden and shouldn't be receiving so much help. It made it difficult to do things for him some times. He refused wheelchairs despite needing one since he had a stroke several years ago. He refused to move into a handicapped apartment because and I quote "I'm not handicapped." Stated around the time when he attempts to enter his apartment and can barely get his foot over the threshold. It amazed me sometimes that he made it over the curb of the sidewalk. I remember once closer to the end when the cancer began to metastasize, he asked me as I walked behind him if I was going to catch him if he began to fall. It surprised me that he admitted it but it showed how far along he'd come from denial of the cancer to acceptance of the fact that he was deteriorating. It forced me to accept it to. I don't think it will be easy to forget that moment of realization that there was definitely no way he would win the fight. He was already weak when diagnosed and then when it was he was it stage three without surgery as a option. I really miss my uncle. It saddens me that I'll never hear his laugh again or see him wring his hands while listening to people talk. I never get to fix his plate for him adding butt loads of pepper to everything on it. I never rearrange anything in his bedroom for him or fix his sheets and pillowcases. I'll never drive him to the store and marvel at his very country way of explaining what he wanted. And the list goes on. Granted I didn't always want to help but I did. Even still it's sad to realize this but kind of a relief all the same. It was tough seeing him go through all of it. The pain he tried to hide from everyone but the nurse/maid that visited his apartment. The sickness his cocktail of meds caused. And perhaps the most sealing thing of all for me, even more so than his comment to me was the DNR order taped to the wall above his bed. Being a cancer patient caregiver is difficult. At the relay, I could have joined the group of caregivers but I didn't. At the time I thought I wouldn't be able to handle it being so close to when he died. I even appreciated it when we did the luminary ceremony when my eyes were very misty. But now I wish I'd gone for him. I feel the luminary wasn't enough. I feel I should have honored him while the wounds were fresh. While he's still fresh and fully loved and not forgotten in my heart.
If I go again next year I don't know if I'll join. Nothing can make up for this year. But next time, next Relay, I'll do what's in my heart. I hope I can honor all of those before me and all the other caretakers whose hearts ache just as mine has and still does. I hope to glorify and honor God, thanking Him for the support and love of those behind the Relay. I hope to honor and do justice to the will of my heart and soul, giving them what they need to finally lay my uncle Ned to rest. And hopefully ease this pain. But never forget it.

Sorry this is so very long. But I needed a place to vent all of this thought about my loved one.

Self