Seeing Thestrals

Good news here -- Last week's surgery comfortably removed the tumor with room to spare. The pathology report indicated clean margins, no lympho-vascular involvement, minimal invasion, and other various happy things (all interspersed with the word "carcinoma," again and again). I spent yesterday getting MRI scans, and will still likely need a hysterectomy after delivering this baby. There is some risk in delaying treatment for a few months, but it's easily outweighed by the opportunity to carry the baby safely to term. So I can start saying "due in August" again, after all, without the catch in my throat that says "or so I hope."

Now after three weeks of waiting, the world seems so much brighter. I can take my boxed-up maternity clothes out of the attic. I can look at my son, and see him as the beautiful older brother he's going to be. But I feel a little like Harry Potter at the beginning of Book 5 -- when he's shocked to see that the magical Hogwarts carriages are drawn by skeletal winged horses that he's never noticed before. The beasts are called thestrals. Harry sees them for the first time because he's seen death.

I won't be melodramatic -- I live a lucky and luxurious life where I'm pretty much insulated from these things. Especially my own mortality -- me, a healthy, 33-year-old woman who has only been to three funerals, ever. But I think I'm starting to understand how it works. When I first got my diagnosis, I explained indignantly to my loved ones that I am FINE. This cancer cannot be a threat to ME, because the prognosis (when properly treated) has a stellar survival rate (as far as cancer goes). But really, I was trying to say, "you don't understand. I'm Robin. I'm right here. My life can't be at risk -- that's not the way it is."

But now I've had time to think about the way it is. In more painful moments, when my heart cried out "Why this? Why me?" the answer was too simple: "What the hell were you expecting?" How can I have a life-threatening illness? Because all of us die. Or as I've started flippantly saying, "we all have cancer." It's just a matter of whether we'll live long enough for it to slip out of the shadows and into our nuclei. All 6 billion people living on Earth will eventually die; I'm not particularly special, just because I'm looking it a little more closely in the eye.

The ugliness of this reality -- like the grotesque thestrals with their leathery wings -- can be overwhelming. But it's reassuring to see the truth that's been invisible until now. This life isn't magic. It's finite, even temporary. I'm not immortal. And this reality can make every little thing (and every big thing) -- the pregnancy, fresh tulips, a hug, toy trains, my family -- that much more delicious.