Nordie's at Noon

The kids were here for Thanksgiving. A last minute affair. The only fresh turkey left was an 18-pounder...enough for 30 people and we were five! Seven with the two toddlers, but they didn’t eat much turkey. There’s a lot of turkey in all our freezers now and Tom and I have made two turkey soups.

Tess’s friends all read “Nordie’s at Noon” at the beginning of this. I read it a few months ago. Tess pulled it off my bookshelf. “Should I read this?”

Four young women, ages 24 to 33, who were diagnosed with breast cancer met every Tuesday at Nordie’s for lunch. They wrote their story with no holds barred. Two made it and two did not. It is not an easy book to read, especially if you are living the story.

This morning she called, “Why did you let me read that book?”

“I didn’t sleep all night. Is it going to come back?”

Life’s journeys. The fears we face, the fears we are forced to face. Is it better to leave them unnamed and unacknowledged or to bring them out and stare them down? I belong to the “stare them down camp” myself but that might not be the case for everyone. I remembered I drew a series of pictures when I was at the same stage Tess is at now. “Will it come back?”

The reality is that with breast cancer, it can come back; it does come back, years and years later. You are never free of that possibility. But what about the women who have never had it in the first place? They also face the same...worse, actually...odds as we survivors, but not having been there in the first place, they don’t know in their gut that it really really could be them. It’s like being killed in an auto accident. It only happens to the other person. After you’ve been there. You’ve been in the accident, you’ve had breast cancer, and it is no longer your reality that it only happens to the “other” person. You know, in your gut you know, it might be you. That is a different fear to face down. That is a different place. And you can only get back to peace, free from anxiety and worry, when you acknowledge the fear and replace it with your ability to handle whatever comes when it comes, if it comes, who cares if it comes. Then you are are free as you never were even before.