Loving Donna

It has been said that love is not something you find; it’s something you do. Loving Donna is the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

We’ve been married to each other for twenty-one years, and we’re still newlyweds, if you consider that marriage is supposed to be forever.

A year ago, when the phone rang and I answered it, the voice said, “This is Doctor Freeman. Your wife has breast cancer. ” He spoke matter-of-factly,not mincing any words, although I could tell from his tone that he was not in a mat-ter-of-fact frame of mind. He is a warm, caring and kindly physician,and this was not an easy phone call to make. He talked to Donna for a few minutes, and when she hung up the phone,the color drained from her face,and we held each other and cried for about five minutes.

She sighed and said,”That’s enough of that. “

I looked at her. “Okay,” I said. “We have cancer. We’ll handle it. “

In the twelve months since then,Donna has had chemotherapy, a mastectomy, a bone-marrow transplant and radiation. She lost her hair,she lost a breast,she lost her privacy, ; and she lost the comfort associated with the assumption that Cartier Santos Replica tomorrow always comes. Suddenly, all her tomorrows were put on hold, and doled out, piecemeal, until the supply could be reestablished.

But she never lost her dignity or her faith. She never gave up,and she never gave in.

We put a small sign on the wall beside her bed. It said: “Sometimes the Lord calms the storm. Sometimes he lets the storm rage and calms his child. ” The words of the small sign became our anthem.

The day she returned home after her mastectomy, she looked at herself in the mirror, carefully. Then she shrugged, said, “So that’s what I look like,” put on her pajamas and got into bed. She looked at herself and saw hope;I saw courage.

She was in the hospital for Easter, Mother’s Day and a high school graduation. She missed a lot of other people’s lives during an interminable list of medical procedures. But she gained a lot,too.

She attended the wedding of one of our sons in a motorized wheelchair,wearing a wig and a padded bra,and,next to the bride, she was undoubtedly the most radiant woman there.

And she found out how much her extended family and her neighbors loved her,and how much she meant in the lives of all of us. We received Cartier Replica Watches notes and letters and phone calls and mysterious packages of homemade bread and cookies left on our doorstep. Donna said she didn’t realize how many people cared about her.

One night, at the lowest point of her physical ordeal,! was in my usual chair in the quiet of her hospital room. She had finished four days of around-the-clock high-does chemotherapy.