Can one sentence heal? Can one sentence destroy? There are to really obvious ones like "Will you marry me?" and "I'm (we're) pregnant. There are so many others that come to mind. Words that change your life forever, they are usually proceeded by "I'm sorry to have to tell you this" or simply "I'm sorry but...." We have all heard them. We accepted whatever the judgement or situation was and moved forward to handle it. Sometimes with grace, sometimes not. But we never go back to the begining and remember the simple words that shaped the rest or our lives. I remember one such occasion. I was at my Grandparents house in Iowa. I had been there for a few weeks and was wondering why my parents had not come to collect me yet. There were hushed phone calls in which my Gramma would look over her shoulder to see where I was. I never got to talk to my parents during those phone calls. My Gramma would talk and nod and pass the phone to my Grandpa. I knew no one had died because they would have had to tell me that.
I spent my days bringing my Gramma and Grandpa large glasses of cold lemonade while they mowed or mended fences or planted the garden. My Gramma taught me how to make homemade noodles. We played canasta or kings-at-the-corners (my Grandpa always cheated) everynight.
I never picked up the phone to call my parents and ask what the heck was going on. I never asked about the phone calls, I knew somethings was up, something serious. But I never asked about the phone calls. I wonder now why I didn't, why didn't I call and demand to know what the whispers were about? I was not a quiet, shy, bashful child. I was outgoing, gregarious, loud, nosy and stubborn. Somehow though I knew not to ask. I knew either they wouldn't tell me, which would put them in the position of having to lie to me. Or they would tell me and it would be something I really didn't want to know. So I never asked.
I wrote long angry letters home that I never sent. I wrote long, angry poems about secrets and betrayels. I had finally decided that enough was enough it had been almost six weeks since I had been abandoned. I wrote a scathing letter to my parents (as scathing as a letter from a twelve year old could be). I wanted to know what was going on. It wasn't fair that they kept it from me. What ever it was, I had a right to know, I was not a baby. If I had been at home they couldn't have kept it from me. I was just about to put the letter in the mail box when my Gramma told me my Dad was coming to get me.
My Dad? My Dad never came to Iowa unless he had to. He never made the trip. He never dropped us off or picked us up. My brain swirled and turned and twisted. It had to me Mom I just knew it, why else would he come. What was wrong with Mom? I spent an agonizing six hours waiting for him to show up. I ran to meet the car and hugged him and just looked at him. I couldn't say anything. All those angry, hurt words were stuck in my throat. He looked small and tired. He greeted my Grandparents and we all went in the house. They talked about the drive and the weather and the car. I just wanted to jump up and down and scream. "WOULD SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON?" All this politeness and not-talking-about-it was going to kill me. Instead I sat there and stared at the wall and counted the seconds until we were back in the car and on our way. Which was another weird thing. We had never made the round trip in one day, never. We always stayed overnight, always.
I wonder still sometimes who that girl was. She was the anti-me. From the first secret phone call to the drive home. I never spoke up, never asked, never insisted, never yelled. I just knew there was a deep chasm that had opened up and they had all looked into it and were trying to spare me whatever it was that was at the bottom. But now I was going home. They had to tell me now, they had to let me see. They couldn't protect me anymore.
We had been driving for a few hours when we pulled over at a small park in some small town we passed through. My Dad led me to the picnic table, laid out sandwiches and potato chips, lemondade and brownies. He tried to make it as normal as possible. I knew this was it, he had something to tell me. He took both my hands in his and kissed the back of my knuckles an odd and touching gesture for my father. He looked me in the eye and said.
"Your brother has cancer"
That was it, right there in my face, no preamble, no softening the blow, no preparing me. After six weeks of subtrefuge he just drops that bomb in my lap. That one sentence. Just four little words. That one sentence full of fear, betrayal, aguish, terror, uncertainty and love. Love for my brother, my father, my mother and other brother, Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else those words would change.
"Your brother has cancer"
There were many words and sentences that came after that, stories about the early stages of his illness, surgery, treatment, etc. I remember them now, but they just slid by unnoticed at the time. This was 1975, there weren't all the new breakthroughs and treatments there are now. The word cancer although still scary, brought with a particular terror, it meant you were going to die. When you were twelve, your head screamed CANCER=DEATH.
I was twelve years old. That one sentence changed my life forever in ways small and far reaching, it's tentacle slithering into every corner of my life. In ways I still don't fully understand. The course of my life changed, the things I learned changed me. The journey, the lessons, the heartbreak and amazing reserves of strength and will and spirit. From the way I lived my life to the man I fell in love with and the journey with him through his own battle with the same deadly cancer. It all started with that one sentence. My world was never the same again.
There have been other sentences that have changed my life it ways both good and bad but that the was the first time my world spun in a different way when all that came after would somehow come from those four terrifyingly simple words.
