Fast approaching is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I’d thought about doing an anthology but only found two long cancer stories in my possession. I believe a trilogy has better roots to grow an audience so, instead I’m going to blog parts of those sagas all month starting a week early, here. This is the Introduction from ‘Mom’s on the Roof and I can’t Get Her Down’, which is available as a paperback and in most eBook formats.
Foreword- I Will Survive
When I tell people about my recent losses, they just reel back and ask me how I am surviving it. I simply look at them and say, “I don’t know.” While my parents may have left some pennies behind for the heirs to squabble and fuss over, my mother left me the story of her journey beyond this world’s process of dying. She asked me over and over again if I would be okay the day after she left. With all the strength of my soul, I affirmed her question by saying, “I think so.”
In the veil of darkness, at 2:24a.m., on Thursday, January 24, 1991, my mother’s body gave up its last round with breast cancer. In the gloom of night, at 9:15 p.m., on Tuesday, February 19, 1991, an emergency call came into my house from one of my father’s neighbors. My father had killed himself. After a routine mammogram on March 5, 1991, my doctor told me that I had an irregular mass and needed more tests. The tests revealed that it was not cancer, but I found myself thoroughly exhausted. How much can the human soul take?
One day, while at church, I heard a sermon about an African tribal leader who lost his very young son to death. The priest remarked, “At the funeral, this father seemed joyous, in spite of his loss.” Continuing, “When I asked him why he didn’t mourn the son’s death, this leader said that he could not question his God’s Will.”
Through primitive faith, the tribal leader taught the learned priest the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, “Thy Will be done.”
The missionary priest said, “This leader of men took his orders from God. He didn’t live by, ‘My will be done.’ This man’s total acceptance of God’s Will gave him the inner peace to accept his child’s death.”
This missionary priest told the congregation he wished for faith that strong. As I wrote this book, I prayed for the same strength.
Sometimes events occur in life that do not make sense until we reflect back on them. Some of the things I will share with the reader are translations so that they will make better sense. Others are events exactly as they occurred. Many of God’s mysteries are beyond human words and concepts. Thus, I will interpret ideas into more fluid ones for the reader. Some of the translations were easy enough for me to handle alone. For other communications, I needed a parish priest to explain the symbolic idea to me. In God’s Will, my mother delivered every key for each door God would allow me to access. However, I had to find each door and open it.
The outcome of this story is not just death, but it is a story of peace. In your darkest hours, I hope this book can generate the strength you need to survive a loss. If you need to widen your faith in a loving, caring God, I pray these words can help you. Remembering I lived through it all, I hope to deliver courage as well as faith, hope, and love.
My favorite phrase is, “I am surviving!” And so will you.
My author name when my story is nonfiction is Cynthia Meyers-Hanson. When I may be fibbing in a novel way I use a pen name Sydney S. Song.
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