Delayed Intensification Day 53: Emotional Blessing

In many ways we are lucky. Blessed. Yes, we have had our struggles and we have a daughter with cancer. But we know that there are so many families that have much less support and worse circumstances.

But that’s not the lucky that I’m thinking about tonight. We are lucky that we only have to cope with the physical aspects of this wretched disease. We don’t yet have to answer the emotional questions. Our daughter is too young to ask why? Why me? Why does it hurt? What is cancer? Why do children die?

We can go through the days only dealing with the immediately felt consequences. When she doesn’t have any leg pain, she doesn’t ask about it. If she isn’t nauseous, she eats. But those are short term issues that will diminish with time. She may never forget. We surely will not. But we have an easier road because we don’t have to come up with unanswerable answers. We don’t have to lay in bed with her at night listening to her cry because life isn’t fair. And we don’t have to explain to her why her friend went to heaven. It makes this road “easier”.

There will come a day when she will ask those questions. We will try to prepare as best we can. But, hopefully, we will have only the emotional questions at that time. We can only hope that she will reach an end to her physical suffering so that we can have the time and energy to support her emotional suffering.