The wishing picture

This is my mother about 17 years ago when she graduated from nursing school. Having been widowed and still taking care of my younger brother at home, she threw herself into her studies and worked hard to finally get her degree.

Just as she showed herself and her family you can work hard and create a new life for yourself, now she has shown something else:

Cancer can be overcome.

Even if you're a big fat chicken.

She told me this week her specialist said she doesn't need radiation or chemotherapy after her successful surgery last month!

Thank you for all your well-wishes and prayers after I wrote about her bout with cervical cancer. Many of you asked me privately how my mother is doing -- and she is doing great and planning to go back to her patients (her second family) this coming week.

I could have posted a more recent picture of her. But this is a photo I hadn't seen before she gave it to me, during the same visit when she told me she had cancer, when she told me she was afraid she might not ever see me again. I thought her handing me the photo was her way of giving me a keepsake just in case that really happened -- that she was giving me a previously unknown part of herself. I kept this photo on a shelf in the kitchen so when I looked at it I'd remember to pray for her or call her. Also, by setting out her photo in such a busy, haphazard place where my family eats, makes noise and generally lives life, it was almost like I was wishing that putting her there would keep her from dying this way. Her photo had become both a reminder and a way to wish her alive.

Now that she is cancer-free -- for now -- I think I'll find a more permanent place for her picture.


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