mommyhoodatthirty.com » Day 222: Don’t Forget to Breathe-Part II

Day 222: Don’t Forget to Breathe-Part II

A little over eight and a half years ago, my grandfather passed away from Cancer. I was a senior at NYU. We joked how he was kind enough to pass over winter break so I wouldn’t have to leave school. About a week after his passing, I went back to school.

Numb.

I started a class called Writing the Human Experience. We had an assignment. “Tell a story,” my professor said. So for a few nights, I got in my pajamas, slid under the covers, perched my laptop on my legs, and I wrote and cried and wrote and cried. I ended up with 20 pages and 7 parts. I called it “Don’t Forget to Breathe.”

Please…pretty please…don’t read this until you have read Part I.

Here is Part II…

Part II

The summer of 2001 had been great for me. I was working a full time summer internship with Time Inc. My journalistic career was set. I had seen this progression of my life going strong and pushing forward. One more year left in college and then I was going to be on my way to become a successful Journalist making my rounds in New York City.

I had a month off between my summer job and the fall semester starting. First I was going home to Florida, and then off to Seattle to visit a friend, then back to Florida and then off to New York to finish school. It was going to be a very busy month. Before I left to go to Seattle, my grandfather was hospitalized. He had thrown up blood in the middle of the night. It didn’t seem like it was anything life threatening, so it didn’t worry me that I was going to be leaving for Seattle.

When I returned to Florida, my mom came to pick me up at the airport. She wasn’t too talkative, and I as exhausted from my trip so I didn’t really care too much about it. We both moved to the baggage claim.

She turned towards me and said, “‘Metta,’ I have to tell you something about Poppa.” I could see the tears welling up in her eyes.

“What! What!” I shouted, which marked the beginning of all the sadness. “They did a biopsy and he has Cancer in his stomach.”

“No! Why!” were words I exclaimed over and over again as I began to cry hysterically in the middle of the airport. There were hundreds of people standing around and I’m sure that they were looking at the two of us, but none of them existed at that moment. I couldn’t seem to hug my Mom tight enough. The pain I felt inside my heart would not stop.

While the two of us stood there, clenching each other, waiting for my bags, my Mom started explaining to me about the Cancer. She told me about the stages. Stage one was the best stage to be caught in because it meant that the Cancer was small and contained, while four was the worst. My Pops had stage four, which meant that the Cancer had enveloped his stomach. No surgeries could be done to remove it.

“No!” I began to cry hysterically once again.

“We believe in miracles,” my Mom said.

“How long?” I responded.

“Well, without chemotherapy three to four months, and with it, who knows,” she replied.

I don’t remember ever picking up my bags. I don’t remember ever getting in the car and going home. The next think I knew I was in bed trying to figure out how to sleep, which really didn’t work because I couldn’t stop crying.

This series of posts was started last Wednesday as part of a Cancer Sucks Blog Hop. I’ve decided that each Wednesday, I will post another part until you have all the pieces of the puzzle. So make sure to come back next Wednesday, to see Part III.