“Bending Into the Wind” by Liz Johnson – A #MetsMonday Featured Post

Update:  It’s with sadness I update this post to share that Liz died on October 24, 2021 from metastatic breast cancer. I promise Liz, #WeWillNotForget.

I’m pleased to share the next #MetsMonday featured post. This one is from my friend Liz Johnson. Liz was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in February 2015, less than four years after her initial stage 2 diagnosis. As Liz candidly shared with me in our email exchanges, moving through it sucked, and sometimes she found herself regressing back into stages of processing it – particularly the pulling the covers over her head part. The event so eloquently described below happened in 2017.

Thank you for sharing your amazing writing on Nancy’s Point, Liz. Be sure to leave a comment or memory of Liz when you’ve finished reading her piece.

Bending Into the Wind

By Liz Johnson

My husband’s aunt had died and we’d shown up late to the funeral, parking along the street across from my estranged sister-in-law’s car. I’d brought her five-year-old son a Christmas gift that I planned to hand off to her rather than mail.

It was a cold, gray day with a piercing rain just before Christmas. My husband and I sat in the car waiting for the procession to begin, when she came out of the funeral home and approached her car.

I pried myself from the comfort of the heated seat, grabbed the gift, pulled my coat tight around me, bent into the wind and ran toward her.

“This is for Fabio,” I said with a forced smile. She fumbled with the package, a bit dazed.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I added.

She looked me in the eye, her face pinched with pain.

“It sucks,” she hissed.

Yes, it sucks.

And you’re angry and you lash out at everyone around you, including the stranger who stops you to scold you as your dog is taking a dump in a patch of poison ivy that you have no intention of cleaning up. So you take a step forward, invading her personal space and within inches of her nose proclaim, “I’ve just been diagnosed with incurable, inoperable cancer. I have bigger issues to deal with.” She shrinks back in horror and scurries off.

The people who love you will forgive you. Those who don’t stop talking to you. Maybe because they’re cruel and don’t’ care. More likely because they just don’t know what to say.

Yes, it sucks.

And you’re profoundly sad. You try to meditate, to just “be” with it as somebody – or everybody it seems – has told you to do in order to find peace. Except that all that comes is a stream of tears no matter how long you stay in the seat.

Yes, it sucks.

And you pull the covers over your head along with a pillow so you can’t tell if it’s day or night. You stop answering your phone or replying to emails or cards or gifts. It only feels like a few days, but it turns out to be weeks, maybe even months.

Yes, it sucks.

And you drive with the windshield wipers on because every song on the radio seems to be an ode to how much it sucks, until you realize it’s not rain that’s blurring your vision but your tears. So you pull over as your shoulders heave the way they did when you cried when you were a child and some primordial sound comes out of your throat that you don’t recognize and it scares you into not crying.

Yes, it sucks.

You’ve driven this road a million times through the years and nothing about it has changed. It’s another stark reminder that your world is shattered while everyone else goes on oblivious, just the way they always have.

Yes, it sucks.

Until you’ve cried so much you can’t cry any more. And you sigh a sigh of exhaustion which is the closest you’re going to come to peace.

Yes, it sucks.

And it always will, from now on. All that’s left is a choice. Will you wallow in misery or, knowing that there’s nothing you can do about how much it sucks, decide to be happy anyway because the one thing it’s taught you is that life is too short?

As the cold rain stung my cheek I relaxed the grip I had on myself and reached out to my grieving sister-in-law touching her gently on the shoulder while looking at her with soft eyes. I told her the only thing I knew to be true.

“Yes, it does.”

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Regardless of stage, how do you “bend into the wind”?

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About Liz:  Liz Johnson was a writer, journalist, Breast Cancer Conscript blogger, triathlete (emphasis on the world “try”) and aspiring novelist working on her first book titled, Win by Defeat. After being diagnosed with a breast cancer recurrence in 2015, she ran for office and served a three-year term on Frenchtown Borough Council and as sewer commissioner. “The shit has to run through me,” she often said. She lived in New Jersey along the Delaware River with her husband and two dogs. Read her last tweets here.

Liz Johnson