“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on.” ~Hal Borland

As each New Year Day approaches, I spend much time looking back and checking off what has been on done on My List for the Future as well as planning what to put on the list. Why do I do this?  The answer is this: Moving on with optimism and with a sense of accomplishment. Making each year count for something.

This past year I have had to deal with the fear of cancer returning and the declined health and death of my younger only sibling, Peter. I have spent a great deal of my life living with and managing anxiety and depression.  Life has its ups and downs and these were immense; for me I must work hard to pull myself up from those downs. How can I do it with more ease? Hiking, friends, my church, reading, writing and diet are some of my strategies but the strongest tool is doing something new.

In 2018, one of my planned activities to move myself forward was traveling. I wanted to revisit with friends and family I had not seen in awhile so the trip to Florida to see my last living Uncle Fred, travels to Australia to see Tony and Susie from my Camino Family and the Cousins Road Trip to Texas to see David, Dietra, Jack, & Jordan was planned and completed.  I also met a new cousin, Holly this year. Each trip was very personally satisfying and helped me to feel as if I was living my life and moving on from my serious illness.

Learning something new also gives me a powerful sense of being alive. I needed to feel as if I was doing SOMETHING to keep my immune system strong, so I took a class on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at a local college. This opened up a new avenue of learning for me. I also took a class on Basic Acting which brought a younger group for me to interact with and learn from. I also went Tubing with my daughter & grandchildren.

On my agenda for 2019 is to travel further, learn and experience more new things. Africa is confirmed as well as Arizona with possibilities for another Camino this Spring,  Japan and Taiwan for the summer. I want to do more creative arts and I am exploring these options. (I want to learn to play the ukulele and audition for a part in a play in a local theater.) To help me focus on these goals I am cutting out Facebook for the year.

My word for the year is FOCUS; focus on my goals, the present, the people and the places I am in. I am Moving & Going On….

For the first time in my life I have been cast a part in a play. I am going to be Mary, a young woman on the ledge of the 41st floor of a city building caught unawares out there with another character named Tom who thought he was going to be alone out there as well. I am acting opposite a 20 year old college Junior!

In late August, I found out I was no longer on the teacher substitute list. I felt lost, floundering and eager to call the Human Resources department and ask what to do to get on the list again as soon as possible. I asked myself : “What am I going to do if I don’t have teaching to fall back into if I get lost, bored or broke?!”

Not soon after, I spoke to a friend about taking an art class or acting class of some sort. The drawing and painting classes seemed to be easy to come by but not so easy to get into. Well, by golly, the acting class almost fell in my lap!

So, the second week of September I found myself wandering on a college campus looking for the studio in the Berrie Center. It felt so wonderful to be zipping into a parking space and heading to CLASS! A class I was NOT teaching. I was nervous but I told myself I could drop out if things felt stressful or awkward.  We started with name games, using our voice and body to convey emotion, rolling around on the floor acting like Sumo Wrestlers, giving each other back massages, and laughing at the tongue twisters about Peter Piper the Pickled Pepper Picker. Such fun and such a stretch from my usual observer of the arts or my lead

ing the lesson role.

Fall is the season that teaches us to Let Go. I have decided I to let go of my teaching roll for now and have embraced my CREATIVE Phase of life.  I am taking photos as I hike, act, write, meditate, dance and just enjoy the lightness of being. I am eager to see what flows out of me on Tuesday when I perform Mary to class!!!

On September 3, 2018 my family is facing the first holiday after my brother’s death and it is NOT Labor Day we are celebrating. The first big holiday is a very personal day: his birthday….his 60th birthday. Peter was looking forward to turning 60 but he will be forever 59. Peter’s voice is ringing in my head so much tonight…his laughter as we would sing Happy Birthday, his dramatic response to being the center of attention with that bobble of his head & twinkle in his eye keeps playing on and my tears begin to fall. I was there for all 59 of those special days…

Birthdays have taken on new meaning as I proceed through life and gather more wisdom. It is wonderful to be present to witness your own birthday, however, it is a celebration for those that love you too.  So tomorrow we will celebrate the love we had for Peter.

We will eat his favorite foods: hot dogs, baked beans, frozen pizza, chips and dip, topped with root beer floats. We will watch a couple of his favorite movies: Star Wars, Glory, and a few classic Disney movies. We will light a candle for the whole day to honor the light of his life and remember the things he enjoyed in his life.

Wishing you peace and sending you our love to you in heaven Peter!

My favorite and only darling brother has passed on to the next world. It has been 24 hours, one full day…..My heart aches for my loss yet I try to be grateful Peter’s struggles are done.

Peter, till I see you again in the next world I will miss you each earthly day and forever love you.

This is the most lovely photo I’ve ever seen of my Great-Aunt Mary. She is 34 years old here and in the prime of her life. This quiet, gentle woman left a gift which made a great impact on me as a person. Because of Mary’s gift, I found strength to fight through a fear which opened up the world to me.

Mary was quite the cosmopolitan woman of her time.  She took the train from Haverstraw to Manhattan to work at the Underwood Typewriter Company headquarters in the Bowery.  I get a kick seeing her with the mink around her neck. She definitely could accessorize. Although she passed on when I was just 14, I think of Aunt Mary often. Not because of material items, yet I still have two of the most luxurious French-made silk scarves from her after 46 years.

This hardworking woman had a savings account for just me and another savings account for my brother. I never knew of her thoughtfulness or generosity until after she was gone. We were a small family and I was one of her two nieces, my mother being her other niece. Mary and her monetary gift is the reason I first went to Europe at the age of 15 for a summer. I had never been on an airplane or traveled alone before this. Up to this point, I was pretty much a mamma’s girl and was off and on having panic attacks about leaving home. I had a close friend, Vera, who had moved to Scotland the previous year. We wrote weekly letters to each other and she invited me to spend the summer with her.

Off I went for the summer. My confidence blossomed and my wanderlust grew. I still had those nasty panic attacks, but deep down I knew I could somehow fight the fear for things I truly wanted. Funny coincidence that my favorite scarf from her has the zodiac featuring the Lion!

Addendum: My Great Aunt Mary was the oldest of three sisters of my grandfather. Mary was born November 14,1898 and was the second child to Polish immigrants, Joseph and Rosalia K.-S. This photo was taken in 1932 in front of her home on Van Houten Street in the village of Haverstraw. Mary never married so she was born and died of a stroke in this house. Her older brother Lawrence was a Veteran of WWI and returned from Europe with “Shell-Shock” and he never married or worked. Mary took care of her aging mother and older brother Lawrence who was stricken with Parkinson’s disease. These three passed within a decade of each other with Rosalia in 1963 at age 91, Lawrence in 1967 at age 71and Mary in 1971 at age 73. They are all buried together in Mt. Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw.

 Some years surely stand out above all others. A birth, a wedding, a graduation, a job or a death are major life events celebrated and measured each year. How does a cancer patient benchmark such an important life event?

In reflection over this past year, 2017 was the year I took my first ocean cruise to the beautiful Philippine Islands (where I did some of the best snorkeling of my life), the island of Borneo, and Singapore which is the closest I’ve ever been to the equator. My grand daughter turned 2, my grandson turned 5 and became a kindergarten student. My age entered into a new decade, the 60s which is considered the beginning of the “senior citizen” years. I had planned to take my first independent “Road Trip” through the south east, but my health took a nose-dive just days before I was to set out on this venture.

This was the year that could have been my last days on this beautiful earth. March 26th I had pain from acute pancreatitis which equaled childbirth without any time between contractions. Along with this I had septic shock.  Both were caused by rare, aggressive late stage gall bladder cancer. Surgery was done on April 10th. Chemotherapy began on May 12th, was administered in cycles of two Fridays on and one Friday off, and ended on November 10th. I feel as if these dates will be seared in my memory like a birthday or a wedding date.

I recently asked my surgeon and oncologist what is the date that would be used to count out my years of survival?  The date of surgery is considered to beginning of THE CURE. So, I have a new date to celebrate and measure in my life! April 10th will be my benchmark for counting out my years of survival.  My goal is to get to year 1 without a recurrence since the statistics start to improve with each healthy year. Year five is a big one so I am planning a HUGE celebration for April 10,2022! Bring on the years!

Fridays have always been my favorite day of the week…. This coming Friday is even more special. It feels like a ‘rebirth-day’ or that feeling you had as a kid when the doors to the playground for recess have just burst open to the sunny, warm playground. The protocol for chemo-therapy treatment was a cycle of 2 Fridays in a row of chemo and then the third Friday was my “Chemo-Free Friday” which was approximately one Friday a month. My last chemo treatment was Friday November 10, 2017 so now I am free of cisplatin, gemcitabine, IV steroids, anti-nausea meds, Neulasta and Nupagen shots!

Thanksgiving is coinciding with this page turning in my life’s journey. Gratitude is oozing out of every pore in my body for: a clear CT scan last week, more energy, sleeping well, not to mention Fridays belong to me and no longer to MSK now, just to name a few things for which I am grateful.  Family and friends are a huge part of my gratitude list. I am rich with caring and loving people in my life. Nearly each day throughout my treatment I received a phone call, a visitor, a card, a text message or an email.

People are excellent medicine in tough times. There truly are angels among us and I have seen the light of the divine in the eyes of many people. There are those that are not aware they have given me a dose of strength and I have come to realize, there are those that sent me a dose of strength I was unaware of until later.  Bless them all, for they have brought me great comfort, strength and good cheer.

I am feeling this overwhelming sense of lightness, oneness with humanity and peace in my heart. I feel as if I am looking at my life from the outside rather than constantly looking  inward wondering how in the hell I got such a rare dangerous cancer. I focused on visualizing the good angels fighting the cancer devils.

So, this Thanksgiving weekend I am celebrating the beginning of All Chemo-Free Fridays. I am preparing to put those CT scans and MRIs on my calendar every 2 – 3 months, seeing my oncologist every 6 weeks and doing something I love each day whilst I take good care of my body, mind, soul with the continued support of my angels here on our beautiful mother earth.

Thank you all for being there on this Cancer Camino with me.

Parenthood, in my opinion, is the greatest gift of love. It is a huge responsibility filled with many bills, worries, sleepless nights, anger, hurt and at times, heartache. On the flip side, parenthood is also filled with sweetness, laughter, cuddles, joyousness and a love like no other. The love of our mother toward us, her child, is what gives us our foothold on our identity as we grow and learn about our roots, our personal past and present.  We also learn to love ourselves through our mother’s eyes, in her words and in her deeds.  We learn how to love others by her modeling.  I thank my mother for her bravery and dedication to parenthood.

I have had a marvelous love of life and owe a debt of gratitude to my amazing mother for her modeling and mentoring me in life lessons.  She taught me we must take the bitter with the sweet. One of her famous sayings to me when I was younger and in the midst of a crisis that rings true today is “Better days are coming!”   Such wise words are these.

A birth is a Gift of Life as well as a Gift of Love. I have grown to learn that a birthday doesn’t just belong to the person born on that day. A birthday is a celebration for the family that is connected to a person; the mother, the father, the brothers, sisters, grandparents, grandchildren, etc.  A new person to love, and as we age, a celebration that the person is still healthy and still there to love. Whoop! Whoop! Bring’em on!

Thank you, Mom for your gifts of love to me and to our family. We have much to be grateful for in you! So, let’s have the celebration continue…Happy Birthday! Happy Everyday to you!