When we lose a family member to cancer, grief may seem interminable. With time, though, the memories become golden, and there is no reason to forget the good because of the bad.
PUBLISHED December 12, 2019
Felicia Mitchell is a poet and writer who makes her home in southwestern Virginia, where she teaches at Emory & Henry College. She was diagnosed with Stage 2b HER2-positive breast cancer in 2010. Website: www.feliciamitchell.net
I get sentimental in December near my brother John Henry's birthday. I lost him to cancer at 21. Instead of crying my heart out when December comes, I try to find a way to celebrate my brother's birth. I am thankful for the time he got on this earth.
This does not mean that I did not mourn him when he passed away. I did. I had nightmares. I was depressed. Life did not make sense. One day, one year, it got easier, in part because my family keeps his memory alive with stories.
I think I stopped mourning when John Henry appeared in a dream as a healthy young man. That dream came just after September 11, 2001. I was sitting at the kitchen table with him and our father John, who had also passed (from complications of Parkinson's Disease and cancer). My brother and my father were two of the wisest people I have ever met. In this dream, I asked them to help me make sense of the senseless. They talked and gave me solace.
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