MOXIE

      I got to rehearse with my friends today.  I always enjoy this chorus rehearsal.  One particular moment, Lona did her solo.  She was ecstatic to get it as this was her first time even though she has auditioned before. She was so excited that she ran around and  high fived the director and another singer, Jan, who helped her learn it.  She knows very well the anxiety that comes over her when she sings so she stands up to sing it. Today, she asked the director if she could face us.  She said it would help her.  I thought this was such a smart thing to do.  When she started singing, she seemed to like the feedback from us even though we were backing her up with “oos” like the Pips as one woman said.  She was more expressive looking at us.  I was thinking how cool to look out at an audience and see the support in people's eyes.  After she was done, she was thrilled and danced back to her chair. Her close friend sitting next to me said quietly, “I’m going to cry.”  I was too.  Whenever I see somebody so brave like she is, especially a good friend, I get emotional.  

FRIENDS?

   So… if your close friend since childhood hears from someone that you have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and doesn’t call or write, that’s a tip they don’t want to talk to you…even if you have remained in close contact, calling and seeing them when they come home to visit family....And if you email them and share everything, saying when surgery is and what treatments you are thinking about and they write back and say “Call.”, and you do, and you leave a message, and they don’t call back....  That’s another tip.  And if you email after that, and ask when a good time is to call, and they still don't respond, that's a brick wall falling on your head...But if they continue with this passive aggressive behavior for 4 months, and you still call and email….then..... you’re STUPID.  

NAPKINS

  A couple of days before I had surgery, a member of the chorus I am in asked if she could come over to give me something.  When she got here, she gave me a red cloth napkin that said, "Love".  She explained it belonged to a  former member who passed away.  Bunny.  Bunny had a massive heart attack the day after a performance and was in a coma for a while and died.  We were all deeply shaken by it. I liked her alot.  I thought it was "cool" that she got to do what she enjoyed, which was singing in this chorus, and then was done.  When Kathy gave this memento to me, she explained that whenever anyone is going through a crisis or a particularly tough time, they get this napkin to sort of remind them that they are not alone.  I also took it to mean Bunny was watching over me.  A friend came over and I shared this story and she said, "Don't you think you should have something with 'live' energy?"I asked if she meant, as opposed to something from someone who has passed ... She said, "Yes."  If this was an issue for me, I'd have to get rid of many things in my home as they are passed down from my dead parents.   I feel strongly that it was the gesture that mattered and the love that these women have shown me. When Kathy shared the story, I was almost in tears.   I think that "things" carry energy and  I think the energy was gentle and loving, and incredibly supportive....That's all I care about.

ITALIANS

    Lately, I have been thinking about all the funerals I have been to.  I think they are a strange way to say goodbye.  Even the funerals for my parents.  My parents had so many siblings.  And so  I went to a lot of funerals while I was growing up.  One of my dad’s brother’s died when I was about 21.  When I went up to the casket,  I remember looking at my uncle and grinning.  I wasn’t close to him at all.  So I felt almost nothing and thought that it was messed up to be in a casket like that.  I watched a cousin in tears and I wondered how close she was to him.  Then I saw my parents and they weren’t too shaken.  They would just make the rounds and see everyone.  One time my mother was walking out of a wake for another uncle and my cousin Lynette stopped her and said, “Aunt Eva, are you bringing your cannolis tomorrow?  My mother said, I am defrosting the dough to make “Pit than quze.”  I am phonetically spelling this but they were these spinach pies that my mother made from a recipe passed down from my dad’s mother.  Lynette said, “So?” My mother said, “So I don’t have time to make cannoli’s.”   Lynette said, “Well, what about tomorrow?” My mother said she was making a different kind of cookie tomorrow.  Lynette followed my mother out the door trying to convince her to make her famous cannoli’s.  It's all about the food for us.  My cousin Jeff at one funeral went up to a cousin, shook her hand and said, “Thank you for coming.”  He handed her a picture of herself in the 60’s. He was so serious when he did it, that she thought he was upset that our uncle died.  He wasn’t. It was her high school picture with the Dr. Zhivago French twist that all the girls wore back then.  We all giggled over this.

  Nothing beats my Aunt Kay at my mother’s wake and funeral.  We kept the casket closed and I’m glad, but she began crying and then screaming, “Eva! EVA!!!!” She sounded like a monkey.  My mother was the youngest of seven and Kay was the oldest.  My mother was also the first to die which threw her siblings for a loop.  They all expected her to outlive them.  “Eva!  Eva!”  Then my mother's sister, Aunt Clara,  started shaking and doing the same thing.  I heard one uncle say, “There they go.”  I guess this is what they did at funerals, but I never saw it.  So my cousin Joyce tried to calm down Aunt Clara and told me I had to come over.  So I did and Aunt Clara couldn’t let go of me.  Her husband came over, tried to pry her arms away from me and said, “Ok.. let her go.”  She wouldn’t.  It was like a Marx Brothers routine. Then at the funeral, my Aunt Kay did the same thing.  As the priest was saying the Lord’s prayer when we were all outside at the cemetary, she started screaming again.  We passed out pink roses as those were my Mom’s favorite  and she threw her’s and hit my My Uncle Joe with it. Uncle Joe was one of my mom's brothers.  He tried to restrain her and she said, “I love you Joe, but I love EVA!!!”  When he died about a year later very suddenly, his daughter Micki told me Aunt Kay would look at the open casket and scream, “Get up Joe!!! Get up!!!”  I had missed this and I am glad.  After my mother’s funeral, we talked and laughed about everyone.  We kept imitating Aunt Kay.  So much so that pretty soon my not quite 2 year old nephew was doing it.  It seems we could have had as much fun giving a party.  It would have been cheaper. 

NEMO

   Chemo sounds like Nemo, doesn't it?  "Finding Chemo", starring Ellen Degeneres.  Don't worry.  I'm not having it.  I hear about chemo alot lately.  I have great respect for someone who goes through it.  One friend who has been a Godsend to me during all of this says that healing from a mastectomy was nothing compared to the chemo.  She said it's the gift that keeps on giving. She said some of her memory has left her.  I went to a breast cancer support group when I was first diagnosed and one woman said she had to be hospitalized because she almost died from chemo.  I heard Sharon Osbourne say that you think the cancer has come back because the chemo is so awful.  It's so weird.  As I shared with a friend last night, I don't feel like I had cancer.  The doctors saw it.  Not me.  And the doctors biopsied and looked and looked at everything. They gave options, but I don't feel like I had anything wrong.  How is it that they know more about a body that I have lived in 55 years and they just met me?  I know this is obvious, but just saying.   A test is being done right now that determines the likelihood of the cancer returning.  Do I really want to know this?  This also determines whether the oncologist will recommend chemo or just radiation alone.  It determines whether he says you will be very sick for a long time throwing up, losing your hair, your memory and God knows what else... or  just nuking you with radiation.  I'll stick with the latter.