The Circle of Life

So I just wrote a post about how happy I am about my friends’ babies. But I also need to write about how sad, heart broken, disbelieving I am about something else that one of those same friends is going through (as if one needs to go through “something else” at the same time one gives birth!).

M. had her baby boy on Monday 2/25. Everything went well, they’re healthy and happy. I want them to remain that way. She should have uninterrupted time to be joyful about this child. Last week, while baby Alex prepared to enter the world, M. found out that a lifelong friend of hers who has battled cancer twice is now at a stage where they are “making her comfortable.” These are words you don’t want to hear regarding life threatening illnesses. It means that the drs. can’t do anything else. This friend fought one battle with cancer, thought it was gone. She ran marathons. She got married. Then… bam! Cancer’s back (this is just over a year ago). She went through all kinds of treatments, kept people updated on a blog, and fought. Hard. She was strong, otherwise healthy, and determined to be healthy. She had a scan 2 weeks ago and was told that her lungs and liver are “covered with tumors.” This is the liver that was partially removed and grew back last go ’round. Did I mention that this beautiful, practically-a-newlywed, intelligent marathon runner is the same age as me and M? Did I tell you that we’re 33? We’re supposed to see new lives in our kids’ faces, not the end of lives in our friends bodies.

M. has been friends with this girl practically her whole life. I met her a couple times in college, at various events (weddings, etc.) since then. So, as M. brings her son home from the hospital and prepares for the new life that an infant, a husband, a few cats, a dog and an 18 year old stepdaughter brings…she also wraps her head around going to see her friend, perhaps for the last time, within the first week of her child’s life. And she tries to ready herself for what will come next. As M. said this morning, “This Circle of Life thing really sucks.”