I’m terrified of Death. There I’ve said it. It’s out there and therefore now there’s no taking it back, and it becomes a recognized flaw on me by each of you. Don’t worry, I’m admittedly full of flaws so adding one more to the stack doesn’t intimidate me all that much. I’ve aired out my very personal dirty laundry about boobs on a blog, so I can surely admit my fear of death. But there is a qualifier in that statement. It is not MY death I fear. Not even a little bit. Not even an ounce. (Well ok, maybe an ounce, but it’s very little and if it exists it's for the nostalgia of what will be left behind). It is YOUR death I fear. I’m so greatly impacted by the emotions a person feels after the loss of a loved one. I detest that uncontrollable down to the core indescribable pain one feels after a person dies. The first time you sit at the dinner table and your brother isn’t beside you. The drive to the house your grandmother inhabited just hours ago. Opening the mailbox the day after the funeral to find a letter addressed not to you but to him who can no longer lift the edge of the flap to see the contents. The first time you walk back into his bedroom and see the fleece footed pajamas your toddler wore the night before and never to again. The first time you climb into a now empty bed and feel the now cold sheets to your right where your husband lay every night for the past 32 years. Curling up on your side and He no longer there to slide over into the curve of your back to keep you warm. You pull over his pillow and place it under you head so you can smell his aftershave one more time. You roll over on to his space to catch a sliver of a memory you shared. The most empty of empty. I dread those moments. I loathe those moments. I even cherish those moments. But when any of us experience one of those moments, I am right there with you feeling it to my core. Almost un-naturally so.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all happy go lucky for the person that actually died. With great anticipation of a Christ-follower finding their way to God’s side, could there be anything better? I trust God very purposely pulled that person into his arms and thus removing them from ours for a very special reason yet to be dicovered and for all the goodness that can come from loss. The person we just lost is much better off in that new perfect world than in our very fallen broken world here below. But for those of us left behind to endure the raw, unavoidable, so difficult to describe emotions that flood our every waking moment after that death, it wrecks me. I feel it in my everything, every nook and cranny, I can feel that bone crushing pressure in the center of my chest. I feel it even as I type.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all happy go lucky for the person that actually died. With great anticipation of a Christ-follower finding their way to God’s side, could there be anything better? I trust God very purposely pulled that person into his arms and thus removing them from ours for a very special reason yet to be dicovered and for all the goodness that can come from loss. The person we just lost is much better off in that new perfect world than in our very fallen broken world here below. But for those of us left behind to endure the raw, unavoidable, so difficult to describe emotions that flood our every waking moment after that death, it wrecks me. I feel it in my everything, every nook and cranny, I can feel that bone crushing pressure in the center of my chest. I feel it even as I type.
The real meat of it is I already struggle with preparing myself for the loss of my parents, my spouse, my siblings, my best friends. It’s inevitable right? I’m pushing 40. I’ve already loss 3 grandparents. Those moments I care not to relive. I watch mothers and fathers lose their children on an ongoing frequency in my career. We live in a fallen world, and therefore we can’t avoid loss either in an expected pattern (an elderly grandparent) or unexpected (a beloved sister well before her time). I lost one of my best friends to aggressive melanoma 2 years ago. Ann had turned 36 only a few days before leaving in her path of cherished moments 2 young children, a devoted husband, and more people impacted by her journey than you would care to count. She’s one for the books. I wager we’ve all experienced a similar loss that is now forefront in your own mind as you read this. Her death cored me. It put a very identifiable dent in my January, my February, and my many months to come. Only about a month earlier I was brushed by the loss of an acquaintance turned friend, Ben. His sister and I had been close as children navigating the mysteries of becoming a teenager. He was in his very early 30s and sarcoma rather quickly ripped him from his family. I was lucky enough to spend time with him throughout his hospital course. God placed me there for a just a moment as that. Not for Ben’s sake, but for what Ben and his death would teach me. Initially, his death consumed me. I would wake up in the middle of the night grieving the emotions not solely of his death, but also of what the families remaining here below were experiencing at that very moment. That crawl into the floor, curl up into a ball, intense grief of loss. Thinking at any second you will open your inbox and there will sit an email from him/her talking about your upcoming weekend plans, or you walk into the kitchen and there he/she stands digging through the pantry for chocolate chip cookies. It's those precious moments in the aftermath that gut me and have me clinging to loved ones with an intensity I can't fully describe. I live for memories, and I love people and what they can bring to my life. I want that to be never-ending.
Later, I realized these two deaths forced me to look at and evaluate why it touches me so deeply. I greatly struggle watching one of you grieve a loss, and I truly dread the loss of any of my own loved ones. I can lie in bed at night and that thought creep into my mind unexpectedly, and suddenly I’m in a puddle of tears, rapid heart rate, sobs of grief that consume that moment. It’s surely un-natural the level of grief I can have in anticipation of something that hasn’t even declared itself. PLEASE DON’T DIE ON ME! There I’ve said it. The ball is now in your court! I will hold you personally responsible for my incapacitating grief if you up and die on me. Let that be your motivation to outlive me, please.
Later, I realized these two deaths forced me to look at and evaluate why it touches me so deeply. I greatly struggle watching one of you grieve a loss, and I truly dread the loss of any of my own loved ones. I can lie in bed at night and that thought creep into my mind unexpectedly, and suddenly I’m in a puddle of tears, rapid heart rate, sobs of grief that consume that moment. It’s surely un-natural the level of grief I can have in anticipation of something that hasn’t even declared itself. PLEASE DON’T DIE ON ME! There I’ve said it. The ball is now in your court! I will hold you personally responsible for my incapacitating grief if you up and die on me. Let that be your motivation to outlive me, please.
And now there you sit reading this asking yourself “where in the world is this coming from? Why is this on a prophylactic mastectomy blog?” Well, I think this understanding of the role of grief following the death of someone you cherish may have played a role in my decision to do something so drastic as a preventative double mastectomy when I had absolutely no signs of breast cancer. The new data very clearly pointed out that my risk for breast cancer could easily push 90% as time when on. And once that diagnosis found its way into my now extensive medical chart, the options for treatment would be limited due to my previous exposures to radiation. Limited treatment options = altered survival statistics.
Last summer (can I even believe it’s been six months?), Ron and I had both been emotionally rocked by the newly released data about female adolescent lymphoma survivors and their breast cancer risk and had been looking through our options. Do we roll the dice? Do we wait it out and let the cancer present itself in its own time and then undergo mastectomy and chemotherapy? No doubt, God had placed me at the right place at the very exact moment to overhear discussion among colleagues about this data. So I had to accept that God handed me this data for a very specific reason. But can we wait it out and hope we fall into the 10% of people with my history that never developed the diagnosis? (If you know you had a 90% chance of being in a car wreck today, I bet every one of you would stay home under a cozy blanket and watch a movie instead of getting into that car to grocery shop). Instead, do I dive in head first into crazy and lop off both of my boobs, spend two weeks enjoying the concave chest, and then go through the imposter replacement?
I’m not a person driven by fear. I truly trust God and his role in my journey. He very specifically chooses what I may face in any given day, he also allows me freedom to choose, and then He works for good when my choice may have resulted in good or bad. So I had no fear that whatever we chose, we would be ok. I even leaned a little to rolling the dice, wait it out, see what happens. I’m not afraid of my own death. Been there at 16, faced that, survived, lived from then on with excitement! But then I asked Ron what we should do. I heard him say “if it were me we were talking about, I’d wait, but we are talking about you and I don’t want to lose you prematurely.” That was it. The decision was made. I could very much see and feel the emotions of him living with me through a breast cancer diagnosis and possibly the failure of medical treatment. I saw my sister grieve down to her toes for the loss of me. She’s always held me in a special place. I saw my mom and dad have to relive something they were forced to face the possibility of 21 years ago at my lymphoma diagnosis. I knew what that feels like. I saw it in Ron’s eyes. My decision was made. These boobs were coming off and they were coming off as soon as possible before tumor cells crept into my MRI screen.
I’m not a person driven by fear. I truly trust God and his role in my journey. He very specifically chooses what I may face in any given day, he also allows me freedom to choose, and then He works for good when my choice may have resulted in good or bad. So I had no fear that whatever we chose, we would be ok. I even leaned a little to rolling the dice, wait it out, see what happens. I’m not afraid of my own death. Been there at 16, faced that, survived, lived from then on with excitement! But then I asked Ron what we should do. I heard him say “if it were me we were talking about, I’d wait, but we are talking about you and I don’t want to lose you prematurely.” That was it. The decision was made. I could very much see and feel the emotions of him living with me through a breast cancer diagnosis and possibly the failure of medical treatment. I saw my sister grieve down to her toes for the loss of me. She’s always held me in a special place. I saw my mom and dad have to relive something they were forced to face the possibility of 21 years ago at my lymphoma diagnosis. I knew what that feels like. I saw it in Ron’s eyes. My decision was made. These boobs were coming off and they were coming off as soon as possible before tumor cells crept into my MRI screen.
There you have it. The real meat of why I did what I did. Of course there are a few other pieces of influence rolled into there as well, but for the most part my flaw of my fear of those left behind after death led to a crazy decision that I don’t regret for a single minute. I didn’t do it only for myself. I did it for him. I did it for my siblings and parents. I chose life over potential death for those in my personal circle. For anyone who ever loved me and for anyone who would grieve my loss.
So does that mean I can blame one of you for the chaos of my crazy August? Yeah, let’s do that. It makes me feel better.
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