Please stay with me, as I’m really going in a different direction this week. This post is not about autism. Believe it or not I am able write about something else and there is another dimension to my life. I am also a daughter, a wife, a sister and a friend and the lens I’m looking through today is that of a sister. In some of my posts you may recall I mention my sister Cathy. Some of you knew her but many of you did not. I’m dedicating this post to her because tomorrow is her 50th birthday. Remembering a loved one’s milestone when they are no longer here makes for a challenging day. It’s been almost 19 years since her passing and many milestones have come and gone but as I watch her friends celebrate this big birthday I really feel the need to honor and celebrate her. My big challenge is that her story really deserves to be a book. So streamlining my thoughts and condensing them to a few paragraphs seems impossible but I will do my best.  

Cathy pretty much was handed a death sentence when she was 25 years old. She was in her final year of law school at Duquesne University and was a few months from her graduation.  Because she would have turned 50 today it dawned on me that her ordeal began 25 years ago. Literally a lifetime ago. I remember like yesterday when it all began. I remember being in Jefferson Hospital while she was being biopsied and I remember the look on the doctor’s face when he finished. I remember my dad breaking down in the cafeteria trying to eat a sandwich while she recovered and I remember needing to sit down on the side walk outside of the hospital because nausea and dizziness overtook me. Her cancer was extremely rare, located in her sinus cavity and spreading internally throughout her face making it extremely hard to treat and after 7 years of surgeries and treatments the insidious disease finally took her.                            
                                                                 

❤

My focus today is not to describe to you how much Cathy suffered both mentally and physically because you can probably surmise that.  I will not go into detail about every measure that was taken to try to save her life because that would take many, many pages. The best way I can honor my younger sister is to share with you how she handled those 7 years of slowly dying. Growing up, Cathy was a strong willed and smart child but she gave no hint just how strong she was or how much wisdom she had to share. To this day I don’t know how she faced what she faced and 24 hours before her death she was reassuring me that I would be okay.

As I think back to those painful years many adjectives can be used to describe Cathy but two really stand out. The first is grace. The physical toll the disease took on her was enormous, to the point of disbelief actually, and yet somehow she never lost her composure and never lost who she was.  She hated pity, wouldn’t stand for it and most people had no idea just how sick she was and that’s exactly how she wanted it. Cancer was dismantling her life piece by piece but her concern seemed to be more of how her loved ones were being affected. No matter how terrible she physically felt she always showered her young nieces and nephews with love and affection. She knew they wouldn’t remember much, if anything, so she wanted any interaction to be happy to hopefully create a special memory of her. Her quick wit and  impeccable comedic timing made us laugh even up until the bitter end. Cathy always stayed true to herself and somehow never caved to fear or despair. The things that made her so special, her intelligence, her wit, her beauty, her courage, her respect for others, her self respect and dignity were enhanced and refined through what she suffered.  This is grace in every sense of the word.

❤❤

The second is courage.  She went through three separate surgeries that involved being under anesthesia for 24 hours and the substantial reconstruction of her very beautiful face.  She went through countless rounds of chemotherapy and radiation both here and in Boston. When the cancer came back after the last surgery it was obvious that this disease was not going to let her be. It was the beast and she was the beauty and this beast was determined to take over. She must’ve watched the movie Beauty and the Beast 20 times with Nikki and to this day she is all I can think about when I hear the movie title. She faced death every single day not knowing how awful it might be but was determined to find blessings and a purpose in each day that she was afforded. In the last few months of her life the tumor in her sinus cavity created a large bulge on the right side of her face.  Yet I never heard her waver, complain or show despair.  I know she was feeling those things but she maintained her outward composure to help the rest of us stay strong even in immense pain. She did not bemoan her fate or curse the universe.  Her only fear that she confided in me was not of death but of being forgotten after her death. I  promised her that  I would never let that happen. I still feel in my heart she beat cancer because even though it took her life, during the process it never took who she was and I remember her telling me to correct people if they ever use the expression that she lost her battle to cancer. “It wasn’t a fair fight”, she said. That was Cathy.  To this day she is the example I turn to when I feel overwhelmed or that I can’t go on. I tell myself if Cathy can face what she faced with such grace and courage then I can face my challenges the same way. In essence she became the big sister leading the way, whose actions and acceptance prepared me for my autism years. She prepared me for the unexpected. She prepared me for crisis and for heartbreak and oh how I wish she was still here. Pieces of her soul are in each of my children. The lessons she instilled in me are embedded in my heart, they were her final gift.
                                                                                 

❤❤

I don’t want to immortalize my sister because that would make her seem not real. She wouldn’t want me to do so. She was a human being and with our humanity comes flaws. Making her seem more than human would actually take away from her and her many accomplishments in her short life time. I like to remember every facet of her and our relationship. Our laughs, our inside jokes, our arguments, our conversations and the plans we never got to see through. It’s hard to describe how close we were in her final years — especially her final months.  We were to the point of being able to read each others minds. There was a wisdom that came over her in those final years that I really can’t describe and that is what in essence I am trying to convey. Her acceptance of the end was nothing short of heroic. I hope at the end of my life I will possess even half the attributes she exhibited. Based on all the cards and letters we received from strangers after her passing I have to think if social media were around in the late 90’s  her story would have been very well known and touched many more people than it did. She would’ve become a hashtag……….#ifcathycanican.

There is another final gift that Cathy left her loved ones.  During her cancer years she kept journals. There is a stack of them that I have not yet had the courage to read. She did such an unbelievable job facing her fate that I’m afraid that when I read her journals I will see another side and that will devastate me all over again. As her big sister I always wanted to protect her; I was her “big” she was my “lit” like we used to say when we were little girls and this was something so much bigger than all of us and something no one could protect her from. It is time now for me to face my fear and read them.  Who knows, maybe those journals will become the book that I’ve always wanted to write. I can’t think of a better way to remember and pay tribute to her on what should have been her 50th birthday. If you knew Cathy, please remember her today with a smile and not the girl with cancer because that’s exactly what she wanted.

Happy birthday sweet girl, we will always remember.❤❤

❤❤❤