lucky

So this happened:
We got GOOD news at an oncology appointment.
I know, right?
Who knew that was even a thing that could happen.

Not bitter cancer-widow me.

“I’m a widow; I don’t even believe in the future.” -C.M.S.

We didn’t even dare think about the idea of good news.
I sure didn’t anyway.
We were all pretty stunned by it, to be honest.

Mom, age 81, at diagnosis some months ago: “Well, I’ve had a good life.”
Doctor: “Hold up!”

Mom, yesterday, peering at the CT scan on the computer screen: “Is all that white stuff cancer?”
Doctor: “Nope. Those are your ribs. Nice try, though.”

I know, this too shall pass. Usually that’s a platitude people say about bad things, but it is also true of good things.

Me, in 2008, to my husband’s doctor: “Is this good or bad?”
Doctor: “It’s not good OR bad; it is what it is.”
Me: “Uh huh. [So it’s bad then.]”
It was.

Doctor, yesterday, seeing my sister and me fiercely holding hands and stealthily wiping away tears with the other hand: “I often do make people cry. But not for this reason.”

We drove away from there in a somewhat dazed but celebratory mood, in search of Mom’s request for a lunch of fried shrimp and rum punches. Last time we had only a few weeks between “you’re in remission” and “metastasis to spine”. I know how to read between the lines of oncology-speak, but I’ll still drink a toast to my mom any time she wants to.

Mom, whose picture is by the word ‘stoic’ in the dictionary: “I’m so sorry you couldn’t have this good news all those times you came here before.”
Me, silently, with watery eyes: “Jeez, Mom, I’m trying to drive here.”

We know we are so. damn. lucky.
We know this luck can’t hold.
We know that all we have is this very moment.
I know this in theory only, evidently, as I’ve put myself through seven circles of unnecessary hell in the last few days between latest scan and followup appointment, imagining only the worst. I act and talk all “stay present” and “it is what it is” and “oohhhmmmm” but in real life I’ve been imagining my mother dead and dying and all that will entail for the rest of us, too.

That day will come but not today.
We know what we have here is pure luck in action.
“Genes” says Mom, which to my mind is another way of saying “luck”.

We know it is not because “God is good” or God picked us.

My Christian friend J.T.E., a widow whose Texas home recently flooded, says “I don’t believe in a God who cherry-picks whom to help. I don’t believe in a God who gives us what we ask for, like Santa.”

We aren’t getting this news because Mom deserves it more, she has more work to do here, we prayed harder, we wanted it most. Lots of people who also deserved it, had more work to do here, prayed harder, and wanted it as much as we do are already dead. Nope. We just got lucky. For a minute. Just this very minute.