The Days Are Long

The days are long when you get a call-back from the hospital that says your mammogram results are irregular and you have to go back in for an ultrasound.  Because, of course, things could not have just been simple.  On Friday afternoon, I got a call from my doctor giving me these results.  It feels almost painful to me to have such a beautiful sunny weekend - one of the first sunny weekends of the spring -  that I can't enjoy.  Like when you don't feel like eating and anything you put in your mouth feels like cardboard.  This is how the weekend feels to me. 

Maybe it will be nothing, just a fault of the mammogram.  Or maybe it will be cancer again.  I don't know.  It just feels unfair to me. 

And I feel guilty when I use the word "unfair".  Because I know that we are not handed certificates of entitlement that we will be given a "fair" life.  Fair or unfair compared to whom?  The child beggars on the streets of Kolkata?  The single mother in Canada who can't make ends meet?  The family in war-torn parts of the world?  The woman who has just been handed a stage 4 diagnosis? 

I know I have no right.  I could be told I am fine tomorrow.  And I will walk away, continuing on my life.  Going to a job that I am not so crazy about.  Taking life and people in my life for granted.  Being taken for granted by the people in my life.  So quickly forgetting the lessons we have learned.  It is what we do.  Looking for something.  Where do we look?  On a screen somewhere, it seems to be in today's age.

It is mother's day today, and I am trying to remember that my children are my greatest gifts.  No matter what happens, there will be two beautiful people in the world because of me.  But as much as I am trying, I am barely succeeding not to cry today, in the beauty and warmth of the day.  It just makes me feel ever so much sadder.