July 1st. Cancerversary.

I took this picture and it felt like a great metaphor: a beautiful sunset over a beautiful body of water, with a storm rolling in.

Coincidentally, right before sitting down to write this, I read a message from my son's new lower school head.  In it, he quoted Paulo Coelho.  "Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant." 

And so I ponder the sort of continuum of the last year.  Life was beautiful, then a storm rolled in, and life on the other side will be brilliant.... in different ways.

On July 1, one year ago today, we were doing the final walkthrough of the new house we had built.  Closing would be in a couple days.  We had been through the main floor and upstairs and had moved to the basement inspection, when my phone rang.  It was the radiologist that had performed my biopsies.  She made small talk about her vacation, before delivering the news that the biopsies had come back as cancer; invasive ductal carcinoma.  I sat on my soon-to-be basement stairs and cried as I took notes.  Then I cried some more.  The foreman didn't really know what to do, but offered his condolences and time, for whatever it was.  The salesman we had been working with stopped by the house, saw how upset I was, and immediately offered to go and get us lunch so we could take our time and deal with whatever was going on.  He grabbed Jersey Mikes for us, and we stood at our soon-to-be new counter and ate in shock and silence.  Then I sat outside on our soon-to-be deck, cried some more, and made phone calls.  

  

The next several days were a complete blur of phone calls, research, house closing, and moving.  It was horrific, as I shared almost a year ago when I started this blog.  

I am a sentimental person, and I always apply significance to numbers and dates.  I had been watching the calendar rather anxiously as July 1st approached, wondering how I would feel, if anything would magically happen, what would be on the other side of "one year."  And I woke up today, and honestly kind of wanted to wallow a little bit.  My husband and I were, after all, supposed to be on an airplane today for Italy, to celebrate my milestone birthday, our upcoming milestone anniversary, and being cancer free.  

Then my daughter sat at the table to color a picture, and was indecisive.  "Do you know why I haven't picked a picture yet?"  "Why?" I asked. "Because you're not sitting here with me."  And so instead of wallowing, I put on Disney songs and sang along with my 4 year old as we colored a picture.  And then I swam with the family, and took a nap with my son, which has been one of my favorite parts of each day this week as I am off work.

Looking at the pictures from this day last year is hard.  I'm not quite on the other side of the "crisis" or the "storm" but I am close enough to smell it.  And it might not be Italy, but I am enjoying some quiet time away with my family to commemorate making it a year.  Happy Cancerversary to me.  Us.