Bonsai

  I'm not really sure where to go with this post, haven't really done something like this on my blog before, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, for many different reasons.

Cancer.

  What an ugly word. I've hated it ever since I was seven and found out that my horoscope sign was a nasty little crab named after a disease (so went my seven-year-old reasoning). Yuck.

   But it's one of those things that just lurk as a negative smudge on the outreaches of your reality, you know?  You don't really interact with it or take it out and pound on it during your daily routine, because as long as it  steers clear of you, you forget about it.

  Until it veers into the paths of those you love.

  This isn't supposed to be an angry or downer or whiney post, but I couldn't help but send that rant out into cyberspace. Why?

  Because of two incredible people.

First: my dad-in-law.

  We found out over Dustin's birthday weekend that his dad has stage IV lung cancer. My oober-positive, marathon-running, never-smoked-in-his-life Dr. father-in-law's projected life span got cut in tenths--or twentieths. It had spread too much to even think about surgery. Not the best of birthdays.

  But, blessings do come. Number One--Almost by chance, they checked his lungs on a non-related doctor's visit and found it. Number Two--He is among a small percentage of humans whose DNA happens to match (similar to blood types) the requirements for an oral option to preempt chemo. So, what (little) hair he's got will stay on his head, and the nasty chemo effects are at bay as long as this little pill keeps working--aka draining his energy, scarring his skin (side-effect), shrinking the cancer.

  And he keeps being his cheerful, happy, complimenting, hard-working, upbeat self. Still cheering our piddly half-marathons and 5ks, still working out in the yard every chance he gets, still taking his grandchildren canoeing and camping and train-riding. Still being the example of a Christ-like person which I've admired not only since I got him as my dad-in-law but for half a decade before as "just a friend" of the family.

  We're rooting for you.

And where does cancer choose to strike next? Another sixty-something year old? Someone who also lives close by, someone I can visit and cheer for and support through the fight?

If only. A few months later, it's my former college roommate on the chopping block. Twenty-six years old, to the day (again, what's with birthdays being the time to find out you've got cancer?), diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer.

   Like I said, Bonsai (unfortunately, only a nickname--although Bonnie has a nice ring to it as well) and I met my first day of college. She was the cool roommate (none of us knew each other) who showed up in time to drop a dozen Einstein bagels off and a "welcome roommies!!" note in the kitchen before the rest of us had even figured out where our dorm room was. Bordering on genius (calculus was easy, our accelerated for-native-Portuguese-speakers-only Spanish class--which I got a C+ in--was a cinch), she was also musical (both marching band like me and the I-don't-even-know-what-to-call-them emerging artists and songs--you know, the cool stuff) and funny and fun. She was the one who would help me get most of our roommates to stay up til 3am eating half-baked browines and playing Nertz. She was there the night I got my first kiss and I was there the night she got hers. We watched tv shows and movies and I don't know what else in that tiny stuffy room on her tiny little freshman dorm bed for hours. She was the one with a cabin up the canyon where we had our roommate retreat--perhaps one of the best memories of my college career.

  It was thanks to Bonnie that I got on my only road-trip during college (true, Manti isn't that adventurous, but it was a lot of fun and a lot better than none at all). She was the one who offered me a home when I returned from a semester in Jerusalem with nowhere to live and, it seemed to me at the time, no friends. It was just her and me, up on the hill in her grandma's crazy-awesome house (coolest architecture within a 40 mile radius). It was during that semester that she met the man of her dreams, who gave her a ring and a whole new life. 

  

  Now she's the mom of two adorable kids, the author of the first blog I ever read (and still follow faithfully), wife to an upcoming opera star, and living miles and miles away in Indiana.  And despite my lack of effort (I sometimes go months without emailing or calling, and we've only been able to get together half a dozen times since my mission) she doggedly keeps track of me--checking on how I'm doing, walking me through my pregnancy and the first few months of how-to-be-a-mom 101, still being awesome.

  And she just finished radiation. Yeah, the smiling girl in the fruit-hat picture? Same smile as the 18-year-old I first met, but without the long silky hair I envied as a young and insecure freshman. 

  The thing is, she's still smiling. Like my dad-in-law, Bonsai is the one cheering me up when I get sucked into realizing how cheerless life can be. She collects dumb cancer jokes and wears fruity hats and is just real enough to let me know that the happiness is an effort but not a show. 

  Talk about heroes.