Rickety Leaking Ship

Now you are all going to get to see how intelligent Nadalene is.  How Nadalene is so in tune with me and how much she gets my cancer.  What she said to me will be put in italics.

After I first started going to group meetings on cancer, I would return to my family and friends shell-shocked.  As time went on, my group friends would get sicker and some of them starting dying.  It was the end result of cancer.  And to be honest, it is the end result of life.

My first group of fellow sufferers all died with the exception of me, Sally and Bernice.  Of my Wednesday group after Jill, Helen, and Angie died there is nothing left except me and the day of the week.

There is a deep sorrow in all of this.

Family and friends would ask “Why do you keep going?  This is too hard on you.  Wouldn’t it be better if you stopped going?”

It would definitely not be better for me to stop going.  People did not quite understand.  All they saw was my pain; they did not see the benefit of how I needed to share my sorrow with people who understood me.  They didn’t realize that these were my people, the people who would also leave their children behind.  The same people who would have motherless children.

Nadalene understood and put it to me in a wonderful way.  I shared what she said to me with members of both my groups and everyone was “Nadalene gets it.”

It seems to me Mom that it is as though you and your friends are on a ship.  It is a rickety leaking ship and you are all holding on for dear life.  None of you knew each other to start with but now none of you wants the other to fall off of the ship.  As you travel you see other women in the water reaching out for you to bring them onboard.  You reach for them and pull them on.

As you do this, you look at the shore and all of your families are standing there.  They cannot come on the ship or even in the water.  They are waving to you and cheering you on.  But the ship keeps drifting further from the shore.  More women call for help and you reach down and bring them aboard.  Some of the women fall off and you can’t help them anymore, no one can.

The worse part for all of you is that while you are on this rickety leaking ship holding on for dear life you are drifting further and further away from your family.  You can see them and they can see you.  But the ship is for women only like you, women in a very desperate situation.

One of the ladies on the ship is a very gentle woman, her name is Barb.  Right now she is about to fall in the water, but she desperately wants to dock one more time for her oldest daughters wedding.  It is in the first week of June.

I am having a meeting with God tomorrow at 10:15 to pitch the idea that he lets her live until after the wedding.  That is what she wants and that is what all the women on my ship want for her too.  Let us all pray that she gets what it is she wants.