My sister has breast cancer and I cannot seem to write about it.

It’s stage 0, ductal carcinoma in situ.  That’s nothing, right?  It’s like being a size 0 in clothes.  It’s not even real.  It doesn’t make any sense.

We have two friends right now who are actively fighting breast cancer.  One is stage 2, invasive.  One is metastasized.  I know there are more words for both, I just don’t know them all.  How dare I write about a little stage 0 when people we know are going through so much more?

Because she’s my sister.

My baby sister.

My only sibling.

Our mother died in 2013 from pneumonia contracted while on chemotherapy used to fight esophageal cancer.   Our father died in 2015 from glioblastoma.  Sound familiar?  It’s the cancer John McCain has.  It’s terminal, but treatable – if you want to spend the rest of your life being treated.  Dad didn’t (although he did endure a valiant first round of chemo and radiation and surgery).

Jenny has been told very good things so far.  Stage 0, no chemo, no radiation, surgery will get it all, how about some new boobs?  I am amazed – encouraged – at the team of people who have been assembled to help her battle this dreaded C-word.  She has a surgeon, a radiation oncologist, a plastic surgeon, a genetic tester, and probably people I don’t even know about.  “It takes a village”, you know.

I really don’t know what I can do for her.  And I realize that the obvious answer is to ask her, but just asking her feels like a burden to her.  Cancer took our dad and essentially took our mom.  All of the good news surrounding this diagnosis still can’t make me forget that it’s cancer.  She has found a place where she can face it positively and I don’t want to change that.  “Hey, can I come clean your house?  Remember, I did that when Dad was dying and lived with you.”  But I feel so disconnected . . . when our parents were diagnosed, we united in our fear and our grief.  We talked about those things honestly, and if one of us was down, the other one was there with lifting words.  Because we shared them as parents, we shared the experiences of their diagnoses, struggles, and deaths.

This is different.  Our perspectives are different.  She has a tumor to be removed and I don’t.  She has several doctors to meet with and has to balance that with work and parenting and wife-ing . . . she has to put on a brave face for her sons while also trying to be honest with them while also not saying “cancer” because at 6 and 8, they already know cancer is deadly.  I get to come home to my quiet apartment where my cat watches me write and cry and I don’t have to pretend for anyone.  I can barely imagine having cancer and trying to put on a happy face for THE MOST PRECIOUS PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE, your children, when perhaps all you want to do is burst into tears and let them give you giant bear hugs and tell you it will be OK.  (Which of course wouldn’t happen, because they are kids and they would be scared if Mommy burst into tears.  Mommy has to lead by example.  Parenting is hard.)

My sister will not die from this.  I do believe that.  STAGE ZERO, did you hear me?  I don’t want to be cavalier, but I think that’s about as good a diagnosis as you can get other than benign.

But to pretend everything is OK feels wrong.  It feels wrong because we hate cancer so much and we know what it can do.  It feels wrong because I know this is scary even if overall she is doing quite well.  It feels wrong because I don’t want her to come back one day and say, “I had f*cking cancer, Schwesti, and you acted like I had nothing more than the flu.”

My sister is a mom.  I think one of the gifts of parenthood is it gives you somewhere to focus other than yourself.  I don’t have that gift – hence, this pity party blog.  I have a baby sister and I think partly I am just feeling helpless because, what can I do?  I’m not her husband or her doctor or her sweet healing sons.  All of this seems to be going quite well (THANK GOD) and I actually don’t think she needs me for much.

But I need her.  I think I need to talk to her every day and assess how she is doing, find out what’s new, instead of being nonchalant like this thing doesn’t exist.  I think in her silence, I feel a distance, and I worry she is keeping something from me.  A protective wall she is building to save face, to hold it all together – just like I am fighting to retrain my brain in its approach to this cancer diagnosis.  “Stage zero ain’t the cancer we knew before, y’all.  It’s a new, friendly cancer, and it comes with new boobs!  Yippee!”

Bullshit.

I know this isn’t about me, ultimately.

But it is.

She is my sister, my very best friend, my other half, my Schwesti, my life mate since 1977.  She is kinder and more generous than me.  She is an excellent and adored mother, a beloved wife, a cherished sister, a fighter more than she even realizes.  She has been into the panic and come back out like Carol Ann into the Poltergeist.  She is made of steel.

This is sounding too much like a eulogy, so I’ll stop now.  But my heart is bursting with something I just can’t quite verbalize, and I had to try.

Until next time . . .