I spent Spring Break in Ohio last year. I was with my sister, Chris.  We did a lot of laughing that week.  She was in such good spirits. Every day that I was there she seemed to be a bit better. A couple months before that, she had lost the use of her right arm and most of the use of her right leg due to her brain tumor. She’d had surgery the month before to have that tumor removed and the surgery was a success. That week, she was up and walking around, following me around the house as I did chores for her. She was using a walker but she was walking and doing it very well. She even said she thought she was getting some tingling back in her right arm.

We stayed up late and watched a lot of stupid tv together. We talked, we laughed. I felt so much hope. I really thought she was going to beat her cancer.  The only indication that there was any problem was the night I helped her shower.  She was getting out of the tub and told me she had to sit for a minute. She started to get nervous but I said, “It’s just because you’ve been on your feet a lot today.”  She sat on the side of the tub trying to catch her breath and then she looked up at me and said, “I think it’s the cancer in my lungs.”  But the Cleveland Clinic was going to take care of that with treatments. I had every confidence that was going to happen.

I left her house on Thursday.  She was back in the hospital by Saturday. She never got to go home again. The next time I stayed at her house, she was gone.  I am so grateful that we spent that week together. This Spring Break will be a sad one but, I will remember all the laughing we did together that week and how happy she was to have me there.