Now that I have Cancer......................

...I cry a lot. I have never been much of a weeper. I often feel like letting go and just letting the tears flow. But that was not something I've ever done. I have always left that open, right out there in front of the world crying to my sister LuAnne and my Mom. Even in the darkness of the theater, when the hero disappears into the cold murky water of the Atlantic (yes Titanic) even than I tighten up my tear ducts and tell those tears to stay put.

When I was in my early twenties I can remember seeing "The Way We Where". I can still see Barbara Streisand standing in front of the Plaza Hotel handing out fliers to ban the bomb. From across the street you see Robert Redford... They see each other... In that moment I just wanted to cry loud sobbing tears right there in that theater. But no I kept my sorrow inside. Only now in these past several years have I been able to show my sorrow so openly.

I envy my sister her tears. She is a good crier! I know by the streams of tears on her cheeks that some scene or action or word has reached in and shaken her heart.

Now that I have had cancer and seen its return I have given myself permission to cry. Oh, I still prefer not to cry in public. I think that if I just started to openly cry in public it might scare or freak some people out. They might just think I have finally lost my marbles, or sat on a tack! I'm talking about permission to myself, permission to cry when I feel like it. Much of my weeping is because of chemotherapy hangover or just side effects of the other drugs I'm taking.

I am sure however that I now weep because everything is so beautiful. When I'm in the garden or have the cats out on their leashes playing I just cry.

Now when I cry I feel that everything in my life is in balance. That I am right with all the things in my life. So much is wondrous and beautiful. I can not even begin to tell about it. No words would be adequate. So I have to cry.

I know there are tears of sadness and bitterness and grief. I don't think that these tears are so very different from tears of beauty. We cry because of love..... its absence..... its presence. In this way tears are the surest sign of love.

We don't really have to know why another is crying in order to share the love, beauty, or sorrow. Tears unit us... they take us into the depth of beauty.

Now that I have cancer, I cry a lot ...... and when I cry I know everything is okay.