Precious Time

I am not writing lately because my heart is breaking. I can't think, never mind write, about anything these days--my summer vacation, succulent lobster, or my beautiful ring--while my beautiful cousin lies in pain, barely able to move, unable to think or speak in full thoughts or sentences. She speaks to us in words here and there, and in smiles when she can muster them. I imagine, when she smiles, that she is trying to say thank you for your company, but I don't know. I do know she cries when she is frustrated, when she can't get up although she wants to, but doesn't have the words to say that. Her tears speak for her.

When she cries I am unable not to cry, too. I break down, but then stop myself, and get back to the task at hand. But at first I cry while Donna cries. I say, I know, honey, you're frustrated, and am in awe that while we both cry, my aunt holds Donna's head and kisses it and says I'm so sorry, but doesn't break down.

When I get home I cry some more in private.

I cry because I am profoundly sad, because try as I might to wrap my mind around the fact that she is in the final, hideous days of a breast cancer that now resides in all of her bones and is ravaging her brain, I still can't accept it. And that makes me angry. So I cry as well because I am mad that thirty years after cancer took my grandmother, and twenty five years after it took my grandfather, it had the f*cking balls to come back and ask for my cousin, too. I am mad that all those cancer walks and pink ribbons can't save my cousin.

So I need some time to be sad and angry, to wait for something else to bring to the page besides those emotions, or to feel okay sharing those things while I wait for something else to appear.

But mostly, I need time to be with Donna.