Kontan.

“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” Voltaire

In trying to decide a blog prompt I found a quote from Voltaire that almost touches the feelings I have. Sometimes I really feel alone in this struggle of life. I have good friends, but I do not utilize their willingness to listen. I am glad that they do not pry, but offended that some don’t even bother asking where I have been or how I am doing. I have really found out who my friends are. They are the ones who do not push, but they also won’t leave me alone. There are some who would drop everything at a moments notice if I simply said I needed them.

I have seen great maturity in my children. The teen displays responsibility and empathy, along with a do what you have to do drive that I didn’t know she had. The tween struggles, but she does what she has to do and makes sure she knows what is expected of her. There are times I wish she would show more emotion. I know she is worried about life. What does the separation mean for her? What treatment is mawmaw going to get? When? What is it going to do to her? When will she be cured? These are my questions too. I don’t think the tween understands what ‘there is no cure’ really means. Everything done is simply buying time.

Short of the story, my aunt has been three months with a diagnosis and no treatment. Most of the time IBC patients receive treatment within days of diagnosis. It seems that UAB’s cancer center just wanted to study her. That’s not OK. With my cousin here things started getting done, but still no treatment. So she got my aunt into a center in Chicago. They leave Wednesday. I hope too much time has not been lost.

I am here. Helpless. Hopeful.

I’m not thrilled with the hand life has dealt…not for me or many in my family. Sometimes we get the opportunity to exchange some cards for new cards. We never know the consequences of this choice, but we hope that the new hand will take us down a better path. In life we tend to keep our poker face on. No one really knows what is going on inside. Sometimes the goal is to just survive, bluff our way through. Sometimes it is to advance the game, raise the stakes, and win big. What is really winning though? Surviving? Making it to the end? No one gets out alive. How do you win? I choose to believe that if you can smile, you are on the way to winning.

There are some days I’m not winning. I feel so buried in the chaos that I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are other days I’m pretty sure that light is a train, not sunshine. I want to upset the balance of sunshine and train. I know that the path I have chosen is walking toward the sunshine. I just hope there isn’t a train coming around the corner.

Regardless of the hand we are dealt, we have to make decisions for ourselves. That does not mean that we ignore everyone else, that we act selfishly and without regard to the consequences of our decisions. It means that we have to make our own choices and live our own life, but in context of the grand scheme. We should not make decisions with a complete disregard for others, or ourselves. We have to look at all aspects, positive and negative, and take the negatives of life and learn from them. I would not be the person I am today without the life I have had.

What does the future hold?

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.