Monday - The Evening Train
May. 7th, 2007 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreI drove by the Carney yesterday at dusk to see what he was up to.
Standing next to him at his gate was a beautiful, slender woman that I recognized as the wife of a childhood friend of mine. Her dark brown hair fell across her shoulders. She was showing the Carney a photograph, pointing to it and smiling the way parents do when they show off pictures of their children. Her son is 7, her daughter is 3. The Carney pointed to a car on the Ferris Wheel as it moved up toward the sky away from where they stood, and the woman waved to it. Her face looked wistful as her children's car moved away from her because they are still destined to live and grow. When it was gone from her sight, she turned away from the Wheel and the Carney and stepped through the gate, where she disappeared into the evening air.
The last anyone saw of her face, part of it was missing, as was her dark hair. I hear she was startling to look at, to put it mildly. But when I saw her last night she was as beautiful as ever.
Watching her there, I realized that I have a funeral to go to this week.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Mark was the clown street I grew up on. He was a nice enough guy, but not one anybody took seriously. His teachers called him smart, if only he would apply himself. Mostly, he put all his smarts toward being a smartass. He was handsome and fun, but not someone you counted on in a crises.
He met Kellie when he was 15 and she was 16. As far as I know she was his first real girlfriend. She was Mark's polar opposite, a very reserved and businesslike girl. When Mark clowned around, she usually rolled her eyes and said, "Mark...!" the way a mother does with a misbehaving child. When she did laugh, it was a kind of dignified chuckle, not the rolling-around-of-the-floor-losing-control-laughter that Mark was prone to. I didn't think the relationship would last, since they didn't seem to have much in common.
I was wrong, though. They lasted through high school graduation, and even after they went off to college. I guess they balanced each other out in a yin and yang sort of way.
When she was 21 years old and still in college, Kellie noticed a swelling on one side of her face, and felt pressure behind her eye on that side. At first she suspected a sinus infection, so she went to the doctor to get antibiotics. After numerous tests and x-rays, the diagnosis came back as cancer. The swelling was from a tumor growing behind her eye. The prognosis was chilling: she would undergo chemotherapy and radiation, and if the tumor didn't respond to those treatments they would have cut out the affected portion of her face, from her cheek to her temple, in order to save her life.
I remember Mark's whole demeanor changing. The clown stepped aside and a serious young man with a steeled jaw and dark thoughtful eyes took his place. His best friend, a guy I had previously considered to be the more responsible of the two, urged him to bail on the relationship. They were young yet, and this was some heavy stuff. The chances were she wasn't going to be such a hot chick for much longer. Mark shrugged him off. Instead of breaking up with Kellie, he bought an engagement ring and proposed to her.
Against expectations she responded well to the chemo and radiation and her tumor shrank. There was some worry when, instead of shrinking back behind her cheek, it shrank to behind her eye. This meant that the radiation had to be shot strait through her optic nerve. They warned she might lose her vision on that side.
Despite all the worry, by the time Mark and Kellie got married her cancer was in complete remission. Kellie was as pretty a bride as any I can remember. The friend who encouraged Mark to dump her when she first got sick was the best man, and he gave a tearful toast that brought the wedding guests to their feet with applause.
I love fairy tales as much as anyone, and Mark and Kellie's romance played out like a heartwarming made-for-television drama. She kept her face, she kept her vision, she kept her life, and she married her high-school sweetheart. If all stories really ended with a wedding, then this was a very happy ending, and all there was left to do was to play a love song as the credits rolled across the screen.
But in real life a wedding is not an end, it is a beginning. They bought a house, got jobs – he as a CPA and she as a school teacher - and they started a family. It was when she was pregnant with her second child 4 years ago that Kellie felt the déjà-vu pressure in face again. After more than a 10-year respite, her cancer was back. Maybe it was her Catholic faith that made her decide to put off chemo so she could continue her pregnancy, or maybe after facing down death once before she had made peace with the idea of risking it to save her unborn child. It doesn't matter. As a new life grew inside of her, the agent of her death grew along with it.
When they started her treatment, it was aggressive. She lost her hair again and eventually she also lost part of her face, including her right eye. Despite all this, her cancer had metastasized and continued to spread. They made a prosthesis to cover the gaping hole where her eye and temple and been, but the radiation therapy caused the edges of what was left of her face to disintegrate. When the prosthesis no longer covered the area, she quit wearing it. She also stopped covering her bare head. I guess she no longer had time for vanity. She had other things go worry about: she was fighting for her life and the chance to see her children grow up.
Her fight ended last night. She was 36 years old.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
I believe in happy endings. I believe in love and romance and walking off into the sunset together. I'm sappy like that. I also know that every story that ends in a wedding begins a new story that has to end somewhere else. The best marriages, the happiest ones, don't end in a divorce court, so they must end in a funeral parlor. Each time two people walk off into a sunset, eventually one of them will stand alone beneath a sky awash in fiery hues of yellow and orange, realizing that that even happy endings leave tears in their wake.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Standing next to him at his gate was a beautiful, slender woman that I recognized as the wife of a childhood friend of mine. Her dark brown hair fell across her shoulders. She was showing the Carney a photograph, pointing to it and smiling the way parents do when they show off pictures of their children. Her son is 7, her daughter is 3. The Carney pointed to a car on the Ferris Wheel as it moved up toward the sky away from where they stood, and the woman waved to it. Her face looked wistful as her children's car moved away from her because they are still destined to live and grow. When it was gone from her sight, she turned away from the Wheel and the Carney and stepped through the gate, where she disappeared into the evening air.
The last anyone saw of her face, part of it was missing, as was her dark hair. I hear she was startling to look at, to put it mildly. But when I saw her last night she was as beautiful as ever.
Watching her there, I realized that I have a funeral to go to this week.
Mark was the clown street I grew up on. He was a nice enough guy, but not one anybody took seriously. His teachers called him smart, if only he would apply himself. Mostly, he put all his smarts toward being a smartass. He was handsome and fun, but not someone you counted on in a crises.
He met Kellie when he was 15 and she was 16. As far as I know she was his first real girlfriend. She was Mark's polar opposite, a very reserved and businesslike girl. When Mark clowned around, she usually rolled her eyes and said, "Mark...!" the way a mother does with a misbehaving child. When she did laugh, it was a kind of dignified chuckle, not the rolling-around-of-the-floor-losing-control-laughter that Mark was prone to. I didn't think the relationship would last, since they didn't seem to have much in common.
I was wrong, though. They lasted through high school graduation, and even after they went off to college. I guess they balanced each other out in a yin and yang sort of way.
When she was 21 years old and still in college, Kellie noticed a swelling on one side of her face, and felt pressure behind her eye on that side. At first she suspected a sinus infection, so she went to the doctor to get antibiotics. After numerous tests and x-rays, the diagnosis came back as cancer. The swelling was from a tumor growing behind her eye. The prognosis was chilling: she would undergo chemotherapy and radiation, and if the tumor didn't respond to those treatments they would have cut out the affected portion of her face, from her cheek to her temple, in order to save her life.
I remember Mark's whole demeanor changing. The clown stepped aside and a serious young man with a steeled jaw and dark thoughtful eyes took his place. His best friend, a guy I had previously considered to be the more responsible of the two, urged him to bail on the relationship. They were young yet, and this was some heavy stuff. The chances were she wasn't going to be such a hot chick for much longer. Mark shrugged him off. Instead of breaking up with Kellie, he bought an engagement ring and proposed to her.
Against expectations she responded well to the chemo and radiation and her tumor shrank. There was some worry when, instead of shrinking back behind her cheek, it shrank to behind her eye. This meant that the radiation had to be shot strait through her optic nerve. They warned she might lose her vision on that side.
Despite all the worry, by the time Mark and Kellie got married her cancer was in complete remission. Kellie was as pretty a bride as any I can remember. The friend who encouraged Mark to dump her when she first got sick was the best man, and he gave a tearful toast that brought the wedding guests to their feet with applause.
I love fairy tales as much as anyone, and Mark and Kellie's romance played out like a heartwarming made-for-television drama. She kept her face, she kept her vision, she kept her life, and she married her high-school sweetheart. If all stories really ended with a wedding, then this was a very happy ending, and all there was left to do was to play a love song as the credits rolled across the screen.
But in real life a wedding is not an end, it is a beginning. They bought a house, got jobs – he as a CPA and she as a school teacher - and they started a family. It was when she was pregnant with her second child 4 years ago that Kellie felt the déjà-vu pressure in face again. After more than a 10-year respite, her cancer was back. Maybe it was her Catholic faith that made her decide to put off chemo so she could continue her pregnancy, or maybe after facing down death once before she had made peace with the idea of risking it to save her unborn child. It doesn't matter. As a new life grew inside of her, the agent of her death grew along with it.
When they started her treatment, it was aggressive. She lost her hair again and eventually she also lost part of her face, including her right eye. Despite all this, her cancer had metastasized and continued to spread. They made a prosthesis to cover the gaping hole where her eye and temple and been, but the radiation therapy caused the edges of what was left of her face to disintegrate. When the prosthesis no longer covered the area, she quit wearing it. She also stopped covering her bare head. I guess she no longer had time for vanity. She had other things go worry about: she was fighting for her life and the chance to see her children grow up.
Her fight ended last night. She was 36 years old.
I believe in happy endings. I believe in love and romance and walking off into the sunset together. I'm sappy like that. I also know that every story that ends in a wedding begins a new story that has to end somewhere else. The best marriages, the happiest ones, don't end in a divorce court, so they must end in a funeral parlor. Each time two people walk off into a sunset, eventually one of them will stand alone beneath a sky awash in fiery hues of yellow and orange, realizing that that even happy endings leave tears in their wake.
