Is That All There Is?
I was diagnosed with melanoma two weeks after I had a stillbirth, on the same day as my mother’s birthday, my son’s initial due date (he came early), and my first date with my husband, who told me it had been love at first sight for him.
On December 18, 1998, my dermatologist burst into the examining room in a Santa hat.
“Merry Christmas! I have some bad news, but plenty of people survive this, and I have a great surgeon to recommend,” she said. Her elfin assistant handed me some leaflets.
“You have melanoma,” she told me and waltzed out of the room.
Christmas was between December 18 and the surgical date to remove skin from around the cancer to prevent its spread. January 12, 1999. My advice: Don’t go to any medical appointments a week before a holiday or a wedding. You’ll dampen the festive mood. Wait until December 26, or even January 2, when all the doctors return from the Caribbean.
My son had turned 3 on December 6, so I told him my surgical site was a big boo boo. “It’s an awful big boo boo,” Sean replied.
Christmas Day came too soon. We wrapped Santa gifts for Sean until 3 a.m. He woke us at 6.
My husband had ordered me a one-of-a-kind sapphire bracelet when I lost the baby, and he put me on a treasure hunt to find it Christmas morning. I did not enjoy searching the home for my gift, especially when he’d hidden it inside the tree branches all along. I’m a non-athlete and non-gamer in a family of athletes and gamers. Nevertheless, I gasped when I opened the box. The bracelet was gorgeous and designed just for me. Brian had inserted a card reading, “Beautiful. Exactly like you.”
But how much time would I enjoy wearing it? It seemed an extravagant material gesture, a Hail Mary at the end of our 12 years together. I wasn’t in a very healthy mental state, of course.
I burst into tears. What did I need a bracelet for in heaven? If there was a heaven.
I’d convinced myself I was a goner who’d leave without publishing books, my dream, my mother’s dream deferred–passed on to me. I’d convinced myself I was not only leaving my spouse behind with a disorganized home and dirty laundry, but my son would grow up without a mother.
I knew what that felt like. My mom’s Parkinsonian dementia began when my brother was born. I was 6. She stuck around in her body for 38 more years, but her mind was busy nurturing judgments, rigid ideas, and hallucinations instead of her kids. An entire fragile, brittle package tied up with a bow.
I wanted my son’s life to be predictable and safe.
With Mama, we never knew what to expect or when. An example? The day my preacher decided the theme of his sermon would be “Is That All There Is?” It was the first time I listened to a sermon from start to finish. His words made sense. His stance: We often ask for meaning in life and may spend our entire life searching for it. He added that he believed there was great meaning.
My mother leapt up, grabbed our hands, and stormed out of the church foyer angry as hell, dragging us with her. “Sacrilege!” she muttered. Then she shouted so all could hear. We all flinched, but I doubt she noticed. Then she went to pray for our souls in the church chapel as we stood red-faced in the church garden.
I thought of the sermon on the day I waited for surgery. Was 1999 the end for me, at around the same age as my mother lost her health? Was this it? Was this all there was?
Reflecting back on this day and the song this December, I listened to Peggy Lee’s version, then Bette Midler’s version. I remembered the song said, “send in the clowns,” but it actually says, “let’s bring out the booze.” I chuckled as I imagined my mother’s reaction to that. She was a teetotaler. Maybe even my preacher knew to keep mixed beverages out of his sermon and subbed “clowns” for “booze.” Or maybe a child’s mind and imagination mixed up “Is That All There Is?” with Judy Collins’ “Send In The Clowns.”
But years hence, there was a lesson in comparing what I thought Peggy Lee had sung with what she had sung. Booze made her sound like she was depressed. While I’d always thought the song was about how life was an act, or a farce. A song that held its own beside “Waiting for Godot” or Anna Karenina. But she was saying, let’s drink this depression away until it doesn’t matter anymore.
I can see how my mother didn’t like that. She loved life and was losing it too soon. We eventually called her the EverReady Bunny because she just kept on ticking after every hospital stay and “you only have a few more months to live.” She lived 40 more years, a few years after my melanoma appeared.
Diagnoses may not come true. Prognoses can switch back and forth with each doctor’s visit. We may have only today, or we may have decades. Yet today is all we know we have.
Mama could have outlived me, but God, who I’m now sure exists, had other plans. He was probably laughing a little at the irony of it all. All the hoops in our little “adventure.” Because she lived.
I lived.
Today, 27 years after my cancer diagnosis, I still have a child’s mind and imagination, but I also have hope instead of dread. My mother’s personality taught me not to judge, not to overreact, to be grateful, to take a breath. My mother’s disease, and then my own, taught me to treasure each momentous dawn and dusk. Recently, I even can understand how she must have reacted to that song because she had to give up her dreams. I walked a minute in her shoes when I thought of my son without me holding his hand.
By January 12, 1999, my oncological surgeon extracted the rest of the cancerous skin from my back. By January 30, he’d called me with guarded good news. “It looks like we got it all.”
There was no evidence of cancer cells in any of the excised skin. A miracle of sorts, considering the depth of the tiny, insidious melanoma.
“Of course,” he told me, “it could always come back.” Then he told me he’d just lost a resident to brain cancer. I ignored his bedside manner and pronouncement and celebrated. I put on the bracelet, and I went out to dinner with my husband and son.
Today, I take those lessons from childhood and my 40th year when I stared down Death, and I celebrate. Each minute. Each breath. Each autumn where the leaves turn vivid. Each spring bloom. Each first snow. Each hug. Each word I write. I’ve written a lot of them, including two award-winning novels.
I look down at my sapphire and diamond bracelet, created just for me, and I count the crises my husband and I have gone through, linked like the bracelet, hand in hand, and come out not only whole, but stronger. And yes, every Christmas as I watch my biological son and my adopted daughter grow and thrive.
Is that all there is?
Yes, and it’s more than enough.
SHORT BIO: Kathryn Brown Ramsperger is the multi-award-winning author of three novels, Moments On The Edge, The Shores Of Our Souls, and A Thousand Flying Things. Her years as a journalist and humanitarian career with the International Red Cross have influenced her writing, and her work has appeared in many notable publications, including Nat Geo, Kiplinger, The MacGuffin and Thought Catalog. Nothing influenced her life more than her mother’s Parkinson’s disease and her own melanoma diagnosis. As a master intuitive coach, teacher, and creator of Step Into Your Story! (TM), she helps people find clarity and get “unstuck” and creatives reach their dreams. Connect with Kathryn at https://kathrynbrownramsperger.com