To Hell With Fear - 1997

Dear Mimi,


I found a collection of photos you put together to chronicle your first battle with breast cancer. This photo was the first in the packet and was labeled, 'Nov 97 - Before Surgery.'


I recognize that room - it is the living room in our Hopkinsville house. I know all the details: the loveseat you sit on, purchased when we first moved to town; the walls painted in the proper Morgan-Dohner palette; the sweatshirt you are wearing, which you painted to read, 'To Hell With Fear'; the couple with you, a local pastor and his wife, his name is some arrangement of consonants - L.B.? L.T.? W.L.?


I remember every thing in that room, except the look on your face. You are smiling, but your eyes are red, you have been crying. And when I look very closely, I see something unmistakable. Yet, it is as unfamiliar a piece of your landscape to me as if you had grown a mountain next to your nose. You were scared. I can see that as clearly as I can see the other details in the photo. I know it as intimately as I know the items in that room. 


I didn't know you were so scared. Or, if I did, I chose to ignore and forget. Or, I was trying so hard to not be scared, I couldn't see it on you. Or, I was too busy learning to be funny to provide levity.


I wish the me that I am now could sit with you on that couch in 1997. I would know how this all ends and could tell you that you have many more years, most of them cancer free. I could tell you that we all make it out of the battle relatively unscathed. I might even tell you about the beautiful grandchildren you would get to play with. Or, I might just snuggle up next to you and finally say, 'It's okay - I'm scared, too.'


Love, 


A