Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [164]
…to Rabbi Hirshel L. Jaffe, who passed on the old Jewish saying that words that come from the heart enter the heart.
…to William M. Cox, M.D., who wrote from the Alaskan coast of the Bering Sea, where he was reading mammograms 160 miles from the Russian border.
…to Kate P., who wrote eloquently about cancer’s double-edged sword of suffering and human connection.
…to the undoubtedly glamorous Mary Anne D., who compared chemotherapy’s aftermath to a cheap-champagne hangover she once had after a long night in Paris.
…to Lawrie C., who sent lines from Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of a hundred others, in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.”
…to Beverly M., who when her radiologist son agreed with the recommendation of a mastectomy, immediately expressed her chief concern: How would she undress in the open dressing rooms at Loehmann’s? (Actually, Beverly, I have the answer to that for those with mastectomies or those who are simply shy: instead of underwear, wear a bathing suit.)
…to Paula M., whose daughter cut off her own hair and made bangs from it that she placed under her mother’s turban.
…to Jessica H., whose mother died of breast cancer when she was six, Emma Claire’s age.
…to Linda T., who answered the question “Why us?” with the hope that everything happens for a reason—and then she gave a good one: “Perhaps our reason is as simple as the fight against breast cancer has been given two new voices.”
…to well-wishers from London, Rome, Munich, Brussels, from Chartres in France, from Minsk in Belarus, from Mexico City, from American soldiers stationed in Baghdad, from Taiwan, Kuala Lumpur, Mozambique, India, Liberia, Australia, Canada, Senegal, Brazil, Sweden, from Buenos Aires and Patagonia at the tip of South America, from a Maasai warrior in Kenya, from Muslims who offered prayers to Allah for me, and from an Ethiopian who sent me the Lord’s Prayer in Amharic. Many thanks to all those who sent good wishes and prayers in Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and, if I am not mistaken, Chinese.
Among the correspondence I received were special letters from cancer survivors who had also lost a child. I was blessed that they had opened up to me. It broke my heart to hear from Kathy D., who worried so for her ten-year-old son when she was diagnosed. His teachers later told her that he did fine, and she believed Jack and Emma Claire would be fine, too, although she conceded that Cate would probably have a harder time. She spoke of the strength women must have, and how difficult it is to keep some things hidden. Near the end of her warm letter, her heart went out to me for the loss of my son Wade. Then, as she ministered to me, she added what I knew to be the central fact of her life, “I lost my only son, the real love of my life, on July 31, 2001.” Eileen L. survived cancer but had lost her daughter, Elizabeth. Miki G., battling both breast cancer and heart failure, had lost three sons and has no time for anger. Perhaps one’s “heart cannot really open until it breaks,” she wrote.
Lee, Evelyn F.’s son, died when he was only eight and a half. Survivor Donna Z. lost her son Jeff in a car accident in 1991, and she admitted to what I already knew: “I have bad days, but,” she added, “I love to laugh. So did Jeff. What a clown!” How much there was in that simple exclamation point! Josephine G., Ruth D., and Claire K. all won the fight against cancer but lost their sons. Some lost their children to cancer, like survivor Laura P., whose son died at twenty-two. Margaret R. lost her daughter to cancer nine days before I felt the odd shape in my breast; Liz died on October 12, 2004, leaving the sad and beautiful legacy of three daughters of her own. Sandra, the daughter of Walter and Rose S., was almost exactly my age, born six weeks after me. Walter and Rose buried their lovely blonde daughter—they sent me a photograph—after breast cancer took her