Resilience

One year y’all! It has been one glorious year since I finished treatment for breast cancer. I’m just off the heels of my one year check-up where I got a clean bill of health from the doc! I am so happy I could sing from the house tops! Out of auditory consideration for my neighbors however, I thought I would just post here instead.

The past few years have been a journey for sure, and the journey is not over yet. There are so many dear friends that have walked with me along the way. So many that held my hand as my footsteps faltered. There are some precious trail-mates that I have everlastingly and tragically lost along the way. Through the testing, the chemo, the surgery, through hair-loss and sickness, radiation and hospitalizations…through it all, it is the beautiful smiles that have ended, the bright eyes that will never smile again…these are what hurts the most.

There is so much of life that I don’t understand. Thank heaven I am still here to kiss away tears. Thank heaven for every quiet morning I am able to watch my baby’s chest rise and fall as she sleeps. But, why am I still here and others, better people, stronger people, are gone? I feel so powerless sometimes as life rushes by. It reminds me of the words of Edgar Allen Poe…

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

from”A Dream Within a Dream”

I think the most I can do now is to pick myself up and rise above it all. This thought was the inspiration for my poem entitled Resilience:

Resilience

What’s the rising of the sun
If never there was a night?
What the safety of the fortress
To one who never fled in fright?

The depth to which it plunges
Makes the ball in resilience rebound all the more.
The farther there is to fall,
The higher the cliff-dwelling bird does soar.

So I will climb upon the rubble
Of the life I’ve left behind,
For the measure of the struggle
Is the height you’re meant to find.

by Laura Fenn