Fighting the fight, a hank of yarn at a time...

photo source

Anything that bought Mary another day was good...

Going down in a not so great section of El Paso, near the river to buy yarn  caused  some
small problems......The main one was cultural.......In the Hispanic Culture men would not be
caught dead  in a yarn shop buying yarn.   Much less, a man who knows the differences in
lot numbers,   plys of yarn, and  yarn blends.......

Yet,   Mary was fighting for her life, and
anything I had to do to improve  her quality of life, or make the struggle easier I was going
to do.......Okay, so it meant learning a lot of things.    Like?     Well, yarn called "Sports-Yarn"
has some cotton mixed in with the wool,  and there are baby yarns that may be 2 ply or 3
ply and regular yarn is 4 ply.   Oh it is a whole different world!

Well, the Mexican ladies down in this emporium of wool often sold 35 pound hunks of
yarn  for $10.   If I had been forced to buy the stuff at a regular shop.....Like Hancock
Fabrics, my customers couldn't afford it.....Then they wouldn't sit around and chat with
Mary, and she would start to brood about the horrors of the Chemotherapy.....In short,
if I had to let those clerks in the yarn shop think think I was a humpbacked whale, well
and good........Anything that would buy my ailing wife a little time and a little hope would be
done.

She had lost both breasts and 29 lymph nodes to the cancer, and the Chemo had taken
her hair, or maybe it was the Radiation Therapy, at this point, whichever one was the culprit
is irrelevent.....I've heard it argued both ways.

So, if these little Mexican ladies thought I was gay,

so be it!  I got tired of trying to tell
them  "Mary No es mi madre, es mi esposa."    It got to the point where I didn't care if
they thought the moon was made of green cheese!    I only saw them twice a month.

Why, I even developed a set of mannerisms especially for yarn buying....Laying two
fingers alongside my cheek  and pursing my lips while inspecting the yarn....Patting my
foot,  and waving my hand and telling them that their new Alpacca yarn was simply
scrumptious.

Acting?   Yea, You betcha!    There ain't nothing wrong with my  biological drives,
but, if nothing you say can change their minds,  why not enjoy making fools of them.

Okay, so maybe it was a little cruel,  Know what?    I'd do it again.......Anything that
bought Mary another day was good.......In the long run, it's not vastly different than
the Used Car Salesman's  spiel when he's trying to sell you a "clunker".........

Now Mary had some objections.....Not to my acting, but from the fact that the ladies
thought she was my mother......She was having some problems with her "self-image"
right then......and  her feminity was  taking a beating in her own mind.

In the end,  we lost the fight.......but we won the first 4 rounds with Cancer, and I bought
her 15 years using every strategy  I could think of.......On the whole of it, that statement
sounds concieted as all get out.........She won the fight....It was her victory, not mine.
All I did was to help, and sometimes "Helping" meant just having a shoulder for her
to cry on.........

In life, dear readers, you fight the fight, every moment, every hour, and every day.
There is time to wonder how in the world you managed everything ,when the fight is over.

A memory to last a lifetime

photo via

It is a week that I will remember all my life.......It was the one time that we lied to Ana Beth....

Mary had  seen the doctor.....There was a lump on her breast, and the likelihood of it being
malignant  was about   98%.    We decided to have Ana-Beth and the kids come to Dell City.
I don't remember who arranged the details, but there was one thing that I had to swear to.
Ana Beth must not know that her mother was sick.......Now, both of us were emotional wrecks,
but as far as  our Princess was concerned, it must be a normal family visit......Was it right
or wrong to do things this way?   I don't know, but it was not my decision to make....It was
what Mary wanted........

Ana Beth has a beautiful laugh, and  we both needed to hear her laugh again.  For Mary,
it might be her last time to hear her daughter laugh.  So,  I drove to the far west side of El Paso
and escorted Ana Beth's car out to Dell City........

As far as anybody was concerned, it was a lark, a happy time.....A chance to see the grandkids.
The deep somber undercurrents had to be painted over......They didn't exist......


That  was the time I really bonded with Sara.....She became the apple of my eye....A place
she has held  every day of her life since then.   Did we fool Ana Beth?    One of the things
about her is her uncanny ability to read  situations through some psychic link that seemed
to exist between her and her mother.......She knew there was something wrong, but she wasn't
certain just what.........

I held Mary close and we cried  when Ana-Beth, Sara, Jesse, and Brian left.  Everything
in us wanted to hold on to them, but the children were so small, and a Hospital is no place
for children 4, 3, and 2, years of age......

The day of Mary's surgery came, and I cursed myself for being  too protective of Ana-Beth,
and letting  Mary talk me into  keeping her un-informed.......Yet,  Ana-Beth was also the fragile
one.......If things went badly, as they quite likely would, there would be time for tears. Buckets
of tears, Oceans of tears......Why give her a few extra days of worry?

Then the surgery was done.  She had lost  both breasts and 29  lymph nodes...Beyond
that, the doctor had given her 3 months to live at the outside........I had been in the recovery
room with my wife.....I was there when the nurses couldn't get enough blood pressure to
register on their machine.

I knew then,  that Ana Beth should have known.   For her sake? No, for my sake.   I desperately
needed someone to cling to.

We found another Doctor, and the  M.D. Anderson trained Oncologist stretched the three
months into 15 years.  We fought Cancer about every other year for a long time.....In the end,
we lost the fight, but we fought every minute of the fight together.

So, why is the old fool burrowing into  the  sad years of the past?  Is there impending doom?
No, quite the opposite....Ana Beth and Sara are flying into Albany for my birthday.....I have
not seen them in so many years.    They are my ladies, and they will be here with me.
How can I explain how I feel........Somehow, I feel that, just maybe, Mary will be here too.
Be happy for us, dear friends.

They'll be here the evening of July 9, and they will leave on the 13th......My fearless 4 year
old grand daughter is a lady,   and Ana-Beth?   my 5 foot 11.5"  blue eyed blonde bombshell?
Oh she'll wrap me around her little finger as she has for many years, and I'll enjoy every
minute of it.--June 17, 2010