My little sister came over to babysit on Friday night so Troy and I could go on “date night”.  With wedding season bearing down on us its been over a month since we had a DATE!  We have vowed to never let ourselves go “dateless” again because we realize how important it is to maintaining ourselves as human beings invidually and together.

So I pick up a voucher for one of the 4 sets of free movie tickets that I got from buying all of my Kelloggs Cereal at Meijer during the Kelloggs deal (see older post) a few months ago.  We went to the theatre in hopes that the new Katherine Heigl movie would be out but alas… it doesn’t come out until next week.  So there we were standing and looking at our options … Harry Potter … never read the books or seen any of the movies and don’t care too (totally different topic).  The Johnny Depp movie… not up for knocking off banks.  Bruno… I had enough stupid humor this week when we rented “Mall Cop”.  No.  So there it was… My Sister’s Keeper.  The movie I SWORE I did not want to see.  I knew it was going to be some version of self imposed torture.  I knew that I was going to start crying at the lowering of the lights.  What I didn’t know is that this movie would change some part of me.  I didn’t truly realize how powerful it would be.  And yes, everyone in the theatre was crying, sniffling by the end but as the movie ended and everyone left the theatre there we sat.  Troy and I and ONE other couple.  Two rows behind us there was a couple in their mid fifties.  The gentleman had started crying before me, I believe and was as much a snotty mess as me by the end.  I told Troy as we left the theatre… they lost a child or came close…. and I truly wish I had asked.  Now I wonder… who was their child and what was their story.  The only reason I could conceive that this movie would move anyone so deeply as it had us was because they TOO had walked this road.

So I had seen the preview, but the REALITY of it all, was almost more than I can bear.  It seemed as if I were watching my own life on the screen.  I heard the crowd gasp as the mom, Sara (played by Cameron Diaz) is rather poignantly stubborn about her daughter’s medical needs.  I saw SO much of myself in her.  I listened as the whole crowd gasped and were horrified at some of the things that Sara said and did and I wonder how many people have looked at me horrified.  I wonder how many people thought the same of me as they did of Sara in the movie.  What kills me… is that the whole theatre sat there, crying, but they STILL did not get it.  I guess you never really can GET IT until you have walked in our shoes.

For me, getting to the ending, I knew what was going to happen but there was a twist that I never expected.  For me, it made the movie, OK.  I went into it almost angry at the younger sister who would be so selfish to NOT save her sister’s life.  As we journey throught Kate’s life and her “scrapbook” you might as well have torn my heart right from body.  Kate talks about how her brother went un-noticed and because of her and her illness they totally missed that he was dyslexic.  SO many times I have felt like my boys were the “lost boys”.  I wish I could tell you with words but I have none.

There she is, Sara, the mother that never cries.  Not until the bitter end.  She NEVER once breaks down.  She is busy.  Fighting, organizing, quitting her job to cook all organic and document every single time that her daughter “pees”.  Being almost obsessively organized.  Another medicine, another treatment, another surgery… just one more will be the answer….  Another trip to the doctor, even calling the doctor by his first name (one of the only times I laughed in the movie… at least Joe knows he is not alone.. if he had been seeing Camron Diaz’s daughter she would have called him Joe too!), at one point even proclaiming “There must be SOMETHING ELSE we can do”.  Knowing that all of those things have come out of my mouth.  Knowing that I have hung on just one more test, one more admission, one more step and wanting nothing more than to desperately find an answer.  Something, anything that would bring back “normal”.

Seeing Sara, a mother who literally went to the ends of the earth and back, for her dying daughter, there were so many decisions she had to make that I know, myself, I would have done the same thing.  I know… because I have.  The choices you make in the wee hours of the morning in a hospital room are choices that are, at best, animalistic.  Its fight or flight at its finest.  You turn off your emotion and you think with your instincts.  You turn off your brain and do WHATEVER it takes… period.

We spent two years in a hospital.  Two years.  That is 730 days.  Two years I fought, pushed, researched, drove, asked, emailed, called, begged, pleaded, and yet there was no “fix” for this thing that implanted itself into my daughter.  This illness, syndrome, association, whatever you want to call it.  I don’t know when it was that I realized that this will never be “fixed” but it happened sometime.  It happened and I realized that another hospital, another doctor, another surgery will not “fix” this.  I realized it and by that time the collateral damage was colossal.  I had hoped that I would wait for the smoke to clear but it seemed as if the rest of the world had just stood and watched us implode.  Without thought or care.  They stood by and watched this giant storm come straight for us and threaten our very existence.

THAT I just don’t get.  I don’t understand it because I would WALK through hell for my child.  I would DO anything.  I would GIVE UP anything.  I would say or go or try ANYTHING to make sure that any of my kids were ok.  Moreover… I would likely do the same for a stranger.  That is my human “condition” I guess.  The inability to say no to another charity, another project, another fundraiser.  Feeling the tugging at the heartstrings as they ask you “can you take some pics for the website” and knowing that you will likely never be paid.  (not that I would want to be…  because that IS who I am.)  I am THAT person.  The perpetually poor person.  My grandmother, who was quite nearly a saint in my eyes, told me… “I am sorry… you will never be rich…”  I remember thinking… wow.. that’s nice… but then she finished “you will be the one who is never rich because you spend too much time giving yourself away.”  Maybe she is the one who buried that inside me as a pre-teen or maybe it has always been there but that is who I am.  And being that person makes me not understand so many around me.  The ones who “act” like they care, but never call.  The ones who “say” what can we DO and then anytime you need something are suddenly busy.  I have never been that person.  If anything I prioritize those things- things I feel I OWE to others, favors, gestures above everything else and I quite often put them ahead of myself, my household chores, my business even.  So when other people are NOT inclined this way.  I don’t get it.  Especially those who call themselves Christians.  Those are the people who confuse me the most.  Those who are SUPPOSED to care and don’t and who cover it up with elaborately eloquent lies (which are… at heart … still lies).  Sigh.

Still such a journey, we are on.  Even after the smoke fades.  Even after you have started to rebuild and re-prioritize.  Even after its “over”… its never OVER.  Just as the closing in the movie.  Its never OVER.

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