He stands on the front porch of our house in the October winds, punching our phone number into his phone, saying “I’m not sure when we’ll be back so if you’d pull in the mail, keep an eye on the house.”
Of course! Whatever we can do. When did you find out?
She called from New York this morning around 11. Said her headache was really bad and she was going into the hospital. Then a few hours later we got a call saying they told her she might have leukemia. She called at five and said they told her she did have leukemia and she’d be starting chemo tomorrow. So it all happened in about 6 hours. So we’re taking the first plane out.”
She is in her early twenties. Their only daughter.
He says, “I asked her how she felt and she said she felt fine. She had the headache, but she felt fine.” He shook his head. Stared off into the distance.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way for them. He’d been through his own bouts with cancer. Then came the unemployment. That’s still here. In advertising, you are an old man at 45. You hit 50 and you wonder if that’s it. His wife comes home from work while we’re talking. Trudging up her front steps, looks over at us standing on the porch next door. A light registers dimly in her eyes. She walks in her door without speaking.
I tell him that the only thing I know for sure is that every cancer story is different.
Every cancer story is different.
And in the early evening winds of October, I see dark houses, shattered dreams, the bewilderment of this isn’t how it was supposed to be.
I say a prayer for the smart young girl who grew up next door and all the promises she still could hold. Safe travels and strangers kindness to her lost parents making their way east on the first plane out tomorrow.
A lyric rises up. Born of how you just got to keep trying:
“But now there’s wrinkles round my baby’s eyes
And she cries herself to sleep at night
When I come home the house is dark
She says, baby did you make it alright?
For all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels
Rumbling through this promised land
Tonight my baby and me are gonna ride to the sea
And wash these sins off our hands.”