This has been one of the most life changing summers of my life, unfortunately filled with more downsides than upsides.
It was on Easter morning that I got a call from my sister-in-law. I was spending that morning relaxing with my boyfriend Daniel and we were joking how much we wanted bagels on Easter morning. (He's Jewish and I am not). When the phone call came and my sister in law told me what hospital my brother Jon had been admitted to the night before, both bagels and Daniel vanished from my thoughts, and I raced to Jon's bedside. That day began my summer from hell. Three months of driving to the hospital, waiting in ICU rooms, watching my big brother slowly fall apart due to Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma cancer. He died on July 1st 2008.
While that main plot line was going on in my life, I had several subplots of stress. I was still in school for my green MBA, full time and I was working full time. While I had Daniel during all those months, we broke up a week and a half before my brother died and Daniel removed himself completely from my world as he moved to London. My heart was broken in several ways and I don't know how I made it through the month of July 2008.
Everyone tells me that I am stronger as a result of this past summer. But I think I am strong enough and would be happy to just be allowed to be the scared, weak, girl that I am inside and show very little of on the outside. I can tell cancer stories that I know no one wants to hear. But as I went through my own cancer tale I found that cancer and death is a part of many lives, most people keeping it a secret for the social taboo it is. I get angry at this and want to shout out the stories for the benefit of others that either don't know how to talk to someone in my place or to the people holding their cancer secret stories feeling alone.
At the end of the day though, I am just a typical 27 yr old girl trying to get started in life.
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