Post #2: A Note from Anita

Dear Ones,

Thanks, dear friends and some family, for your kind emails, flowers and other thoughtful, kind communications. I haven't been able to respond to all because I so definitely have my up and down times, where I'm doing all I can to hang in there (which, as you know, isn't like me.) Well, tomorrow's my big "get-this-show-on-the-road, Chemo Day."

Yes, finally--if they get the heart echo stuff done today--I'll get the first fierce knockout round of chemo for this Lymphoma madness: three hours Tuesday and five hours Wednesday, which they warn me might or might not let me survive. But I'm a born survivor, so forget that! I might vomit my head off for a few days and end up wearing a wig quite quickly, but I am opting that I'll soon get over all that, the tumors will shrink, and ultimately I'll hear that magic word: "Remission."

However, just in case I kick the bucket, please remember this: I've had virtually 80 full years of hugging life and kicking you-know-what, I've had wonderful friends and family, and at least ONE great husband--though even the children's father gave me the gift of three lovely kids. (As with most parental-children situations--mine certainly no exception--we have had our moments; but in the long run, they, as with brothers and sisters and most in-laws and a few very choice friends, they are all winners.) Naturally, we all err--and err again--and along the way collect regretful sighs and reasons to ask forgiveness. But, hopefully, we shed our own particular aura of joy and kindness and goodness along with the unmentionables in our own circular, circumscribed and very special little worlds, and gratefully receive some stronger lights from the larger worlds out there spinning and spinning through time eternal. And I, for one, hope when the curtain opens for my time to enter the great silent halls of death, I'll at least be allowed to lie down with pleasant dreams, if not get to fully embrace the wonders supposedly that make up Heaven on the other side of St. Peter's gate, or suffer the agonizing horrors we hear hell and the devil's pitchfork might have in store for us.

Who knows! But at this late date, I can't go back and adopt an angelic pose and adorn myself with a glittering halo. They say it helps to get baptized. Well, once, at 12 years of age, I did that too. Lined up with two other giggly girls, each of us with a big crush on the yearly traveling preacher. I think the preacher knew exactly what he had in his hands ready to dunk under the warm, muddy creek water. The baptism wasn't exactly what I had in mind. He pushed me under as far as he could, my dress billowed up like a parachute, and I came up choking and looking like a drowned rat (not exactly a romantic dream come true.) But though I can't say that gawky attempt got me any gold stars in the getting-to-heaven trek, at least I was "baptized"--maybe, for all I know now, he was a wandering Holy Roller. Anyway, just in case, a few years later, feeling remorse for some sin--or sins--wanting to make my mother look a little happier with her second daughter, whom she had probably regretfully named after her, I got myself solemnly "Sprinkled", in the traditional "Methodist" way. (Though I don't recall any spectacular lasting change during my teenage rebellious years.)

So, okay--I'm not afraid. I've even shed my fear of getting shoved in the cremation oven, and agreed to be cremated, where both John and my ashes will--at our separate designated times of death--be put in thick plastic urns that get cemented to keep out critters and such, and put in the ground side-by-side in--guess where!--since John is a veteran of World War II, and we've been legally married these 43 years, we'll get to be buried in the National Military cemetery closest to us, which is in our county, Riverside, and have little headstones with our names. So that part is taken care of, paid for, and done the most economical way possible. When John's time comes, he can even have a 21-gun salute, we were told by the prim little woman dressed in pink and aqua (and wearing hose, in the hot Desert!), who kept tossing her long blond hair over one shoulder and who, I admit, looked a little shocked when I said, "Then, John has to die first because I want to be sure my hero in life goes out with 21-guns in a very fitting, final salute." (She tried to make a chuckle, as we signed the bottom line, but it wasn't very convincing--though when was that a field of endeavor with much sense of humor?)

Living and dying is the natural, unavoidable course of what makes up "life." I don't say I like all this cancer stuff that goes with it. And all my life I've hated vomiting. But if it's my time, so be it. Lift a glass in toast to knowing I did all I was big enough to do. I hope the ledger gives me more credits of my good-better-or best deeds so they'll rank over my worse, worser and worst ones, as my favorite newscaster singles people out on "Countdown." And if having loved a whole lot, taken the many chances, the risks I have, I hope the results of my trials and tribulations check out on the favorable side. That, then, maybe, my ashes will try kicking up some dust inside the tidy little concreted encasement from some "restless legs" syndrome I seem to have in my DNA. That just maybe the HE or SHE or that nameless, formless great spirit called God will forgive me. And who knows, maybe on my Judgment day, God will fudge a little on my behalf to balance the seesaw enough to at least let me lie peacefully, side by side, next to my beloved John, with maybe some lost angel dipping a dusty wing in a kind of salute as it flutters by on a warm and moonlit summer's night.

Love,

Anita