Vacation -- 2. An act or instance of vacating
Vacate -- 2. To give up possession or occupancy of
Until recently, I thought of a vacation as a pleasant period of rest away from the stress of work, household chores, bill paying, etc. Now, though, I have come to look upon the word vacation as the noun dealing with vacating something, and there is one specific thing that I wish would take a long vacation and never return.
Nope, I’m not talking about my ex even though I would really love it if he took a long walk off a short pier. No, I want the cancer that has invaded so many people near and dear to me to take a permanent vacation from their bodies. Mary’s husband, Tim. Nate, the best band teacher in the world. Zoe, a good friend of a good friend. So many others I don't personally know who are too numerous and who are suffering.
But the need for this vacation has hit me hardest since May when one of my very best friends (we met freshman year at UNL) learned after months and months of doctor visits that she has stage four lung cancer which has now spread throughout her body. This is a 49 year old woman who has never smoked a day in her life, never put any sort of illegal substance into her body, and never done a mean thing to anyone ever. Why she chose to have me for a best friend these past thirty years is beyond my comprehension because she truly is the best and sweetest and most compassionate and most generous person I’ve ever met. And while nobody, NOBODY, deserves cancer, she doesn’t even deserve a hangnail as far as I’m concerned.
To say that I’m pissed is an understatement. Devastated? Doesn’t even come close to how I feel. Useless and inept? Definitely.
Since I'm powerless to really do anything to help her, I am planning to go to Dallas to care for her at least. That will be a vacation for me; not the kind I’d usually like to take in late July when I normally go to Mexico to lie on a beach with a book, but instead one where I will do anything and everything to help her have a vacation from her disease. Anything to vacate her mind of worry and her body of pain. Anything to make the cancer take a vacation.
Until then I will continue to hope that a miracle will find its way to her, that the cancer will take a permanent vacation -- or at least go into remission for a few years -- and that she will take solace from my friendship.
I humbly ask for your prayers as she is a devout Catholic; I am not religious, but I’ve been doing my own type of praying. Please ask whoever you talk to to help make the cancer in Amy Beran take a long, long (preferably permanent) vacation. I do believe in the power of words -- they are all I really have to offer from here. Thank you.
Tammy Marshall June 2017
