Cause & Effect

I've been stuck on this post for days now.  I've had so much going on around me over the past few weeks that I feel as if the world has somehow shifted speed or changed the direction of its axis.  It's a feeling of such overwhelming dizziness that I've had a hard time maintaining a steady foothold on my world around me.   There's just been a lot happening over the last few weeks that most people, I believe, would have a difficult time maintaining equilibrium.

The first event was learning my youngest brother in all probability has lymphoma.  Two weeks ago, he had surgery to remove some nodes from his abdomen for biopsy in order to learn exactly what type of lymphoma he has and start treatment. The biopsy was inconclusive.  The tissue the surgeon removed was not lymphatic but instead spleen tissue slowing growing on his abdominal wall for over thirty years.  The false readings and the subsequent removal of the wrong tissue are the result of Matt having an emergency spleen-ectomy after falling across our front steps when he was seven and ripping his spleen in half.  He almost died from internal bleeding. 

A few weeks ago I found out that a friend of mine had to go in for a biopsy.  She found a lump in her breast that her doctors wanted to check out.  She was supposed to go on a Monday to have it done, but the doctor's office screwed up and gave her the wrong address on her appointment card.  Luckily she was able to have it rescheduled for just a few days later and the tests results came back negative.  She doesn't have cancer.  There was one breath taken.  Now we're just waiting for the results of my brother's biopsy.  Hopefully I can freely breathe again in a few days.

I've also been in contact with family members that somehow (OK I do know how) I've not been in contact with in years.  It's been a bittersweet reunion.  It's nice to hear from and chat with someone that I have missed having in my life for all these years.  But it also brings back some painful memories and times from my childhood.  Not any fault of their's, but by association and the largest of those looming over everything is  Dad's death.  That one event did more to bring about those rifts as anything else as our families tried to deal with the very personal loss that each individual experienced on their own.  One event, one story has many viewpoints and each person will see something that only they will understand - or not - and deal with it in a manner that only their life experience will allow.  As my cousin gently reminded me, not only was a father lost, but an Uncle and a brother.

There have been many sleepless nights over the past few weeks. Lots of tears shed, emotions swinging from elation to anger and back.  And honestly, I'm exhausted.  But some good has come from these things, these events.  I think that some family ties have been made stronger.  (When you think you might lose those you care about, there's a tendency for that to happen if you're smart and feeling.)  Friends that may have taken a back seat to the more mundane aspects of my day are more of a priority now.  But the most important lesson from everything that has transpired is this:  What is in the past is just that, in the past.  The only thing that matters is the present as now is the only period in time that I can discern what is true about life's events.