Chapter 5: See ya Later

I would venture to guess that most people, both Christians and non-Christians, have an opinion as to why bad things happen. Most don’t actually put a lot of thought into it until something devastating happens to them or a loved one. But when it does, the need to understand it becomes overwhelming.
Some believe the “heaven/hell on earth” theory, which stands on the notion that good people are rewarded with a good life, and bad people receive a “hell on earth” kind of life. But I only have to think of all the children who are abused at the hands of their parents to know that theory isn’t right. What could a 3 month old have possibly done to deserve their “hell on earth” before they were sent to the E.R. with deadly injuries. Most of us know someone who is not such a good person, or maybe even a really bad person, but good things keep happening for them. And who doesn’t know a great person who has had their life torn apart by some kind of tragedy or loss?
Others believe in (what I think is called) predestination. That is the idea that, at the beginning of time, God planned out every single thing that would happen on this earth and that nothing we can do could change the outcome. If true, it would mean that we don’t actually have free will and that we aren’t really accountable for the choices that we make. It would mean that God did choose to give Kecia cancer and that He kept her from finding out about it until it was in the 4th and final stage for a reason that He has not revealed to us yet. Now, I believe that God does intervene on our behalf sometimes for a specific purpose because I know that there are a lot of things that happen in life that we initially think are bad, but God later reveals to us that He has been in control all along and that what happened was in our best interest. Like buying a house, for example. We might want it REALLY bad, and even though we are praying for God’s will, we are really saying “I want this house, please give it to me.” We feel so sad and let down when things don’t work out, but then the layoffs start coming at work and we realize that getting that house would have meant putting our family in huge financial jeopardy. Suddenly, we are thankful that we can afford the house we have with only one income and we see that God really did know what was best. We’re just lucky he didn’t give us what we were begging for. But, if we didn’t have free will then it would mean that it was God who made a man stop at a bar, drink way too much and then get behind the wheel of his car and kill a father of 4 as he headed home from work. (This is probably a good place for me to remind all of you that I am NOT a Biblical scholar and that I know I am not an authority on the subject to which I am writing. This is merely my understanding of the Bible and my explanation to you based on my relationship with God.) I don’t believe that God makes people cheat on their spouses so that they can learn some great lesson or that every person sitting in jail is there because God made him do something unlawful to fulfill God’s greater purpose. People do bad things because we are all sinful by nature. We all do things to one degree or another that are self serving but we have choices every single day that lead us either closer to or farther away from being a godly person. God doesn’t have to make us sin. We do it so naturally on our own. The Bible is full of God’s commandments for us and He instructs us quite clearly on how we are to live a godly life. How silly it would be for Him to give us a list of rules if He had already scripted our lives out to include sinful acts that we could not avoid because he was the puppeteer and we were merely puppets on a string. No, this makes no sense to me.
By now, you are either very angry with me for disagreeing with your theory or you wish I would just hurry up and tell you what I think on the subject. Either way, I appreciate you sticking with me this long. I do tend to be long winded. (Kecia hates that about me) What I discussed with Kecia was this:God is a loving god. Not a sparrow falls to the ground that He doesn’t know and care about. Life was, at one time, perfect. Unfortunately, when we were given free will, that meant we always had the choice to sin. Eventually we all do. When sin entered the world so did suffering. God promised that there would be sadness, sickness, disappointment, hurt, loss, toil, and death because of it. Christians are not immune to the effects of sin in the world. We are guaranteed to suffer from it just as everyone else does. We don’t all suffer the same things but have you ever met someone that has NEVER had some of these things happen to him? I don’t believe God made my mother get Alzheimer’s disease or Kecia get cancer. He doesn’t plan for little girls to be molested by their fathers or high-jackers to take the lives of hundreds of people. I believe the effects of sin break His heart. I believe He is saddened and sickened by so much of what happens here on Earth. He never promised that as Christians He would save us from all the pain and sorrow, but He did promise that He would be there for us every step of the way. He would walk beside us, giving strength, offering hope, sending help, providing comfort. He doesn’t promise to intervene with a miracle or answer all of our prayers the way we want them to be answered. But he does promise that once our lives here on Earth have ended, He will take us to be with Him eternally in paradise where there will be no pain, sickness, sadness or death. I don’t believe God “makes” bad things happen to us just so we can serve His greater purpose, but I do believe that He will use every opportunity, even the bad ones, for good if we give it over to Him. I know that, just like Grandad, God grieves to see Kecia in pain. I don’t know if He will grant Kecia complete healing or not. That is what I pray for everyday, and I will continue to do so because the Bible tells us to “make our requests known to God”. I tend to believe that He will since He has already provided several miracles in Kecia’s recovery so far. We will just have to keep praying and believing. But I am comforted to know, that when we leave this earth, whether it be tonight, or when we are old and grey, it will not be “good-bye”. It will just be “see ya later”.

Chapter 4 - Abandonment

I think it would be fair to say that we come from a long line of strength. My mom (Kecia’s Grandmother) lived most of her life in crippling pain. She suffered everyday with symptoms that would send most people running to the doctor. After years of testing without ever finding the cause of her pain, mom just stopped looking. She accepted what she could not change and moved forward with little complaint. While it may have stopped her from ever fully enjoying life, it did not stop her from fulfilling her every obligation...to her family, to her friends, and to her church. When she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease it devastated our family. How could God let such a horrible thing happen to one of His most faithful servants? She had suffered so much in life. Didn’t she at least deserve to have a dignified death? Anyone who knows of Alzheimer’s knows it is anything but dignified. My father, her husband of 47 years, cared for her the entire 10 long years of her decline. She died at home surrounded by family. Kecia, her mom, and I cried together for hours. We cried for the women my mom had been in life and for the way she had died. We cried for the grandmother that my children would never know and for all the wonderful moments she would miss with them. We cried because we missed her…because you are never too old to need your mom. But most of all we cried for what seemed to be so unjust. My dad didn’t cry that night…at least not while we were there. Instead he handled all the business. Calling hospice, filling out papers, standing at her side as the coroners did their thing. When everyone had gone he gave us each a hug and reminded us that we needn’t feel sad for mom anymore because she was basking in the glory of God; free from pain, free of dementia and finally whole again. He said what we already knew, that for Christians death is not “good-bye” it’s just “see ya later”. So while we were down here mourning her loss, she was in Heaven helping to prepare a place for us. We started joking about how she was probably already in God’s kitchen singing as she baked everyone cookies and that the angels would be saying “why didn’t you bring her home sooner?” In the weeks that followed her death, my dad said there were times when he would see something, like her coffee cup, or her old tattered Bible and he would cry…for just a minute. It wouldn’t be like him to break down and wallow in self pity. It just isn’t his style. My parents are people of strong faith, and watching them I know it is true that “we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us”. Anyone who has met my dad knows that he is a strong man. He doesn’t have to say much to get his point across. ( he scared many young men during our teenage dating years). It is for that reason that I was so deeply moved by a phone call I received from him in the early weeks after Kecia’s diagnosis. He had driven Kecia and her mom to the hospital for one of Kecia’s surgeries. It involved drilling small holes into her spine. Several of her vertebrae had been weakened by the cancer that had eaten them away from the inside out so her doctors hollowed them out and filled them with a cement- like substance. It was a day surgery so once she was stable they loaded her up with pain meds and sent her home. My dad had called to tell me how the surgery had gone and to update me on Kecia’s condition. He said she had done well and then his voice began to shake. He relayed to me that when they put her in the car she was still very groggy from the anesthesia so they laid her down in the back seat to rest. Dad and Jeanie were talking softly so as not to disturb her when he heard a tiny, child-like voice from the backseat ask “Grandad, why doesn’t God like me?” That was the first time I have ever heard my dad cry. We sobbed together that day. He said it was hard to watch his grandchild suffer. He hated that he could only stand by and watch as she dealt with the pain and fear that comes with Cancer. But what brought him to tears that day was the realization that Kecia thought, in her greatest time of need, the one who loved her the most had turned His back on her. She thought that God had sent her this terrible disease and then abandoned her at her weakest moment. It was at that moment that Dad understood how terribly alone and frightened she must feel. He began to explain that God had promised to be with her every step of the way if she would allow Him too, but as quickly as she had asked the question, she was asleep again. That conversation would have to wait. Kecia had made it through the first two physical hurdles in her battle with Cancer, but the spiritual battle had only just begun.

Chapter 3 - Getting the Full Picture

It would be just a few days later that we learned the full extent to which Cancer had
spread through Kecia’s body. Her right breast was almost 70% tumor. Not the solid lump kind that is more easily operable, but the inflammatory kind that spreads like wildfire and is easily “disrupted” during surgery causing it to spread more. Doctors would not be able to remove it until they had shrunk it to a more manageable size. The one at the base of her spine…the one that alerted her to the problem in the first place…was actually inside her bone. It could be likened to straw with an inserted balloon. As the tumor (balloon) began to grow, the bone (straw) began to expand until it actually split in some places. The tumor had spread through the bone in one place and was actually eating away at her nerve. She reported that on a scale from 1-10, her pain level over the past month was usually a 9 or 10. The doctor reviewing her scans said he couldn’t believe Kecia had walked herself into the office. The pain she must have been in was indescribable, yet she had continued to work her full time job and two part time ones with very little complaint. Just a few weeks before, we had painted our new counseling office and moved in all of the furniture. A few times during that weekend she had needed to stop for a short break due to back pain, but she gave no indication that she suffered from the excruciating pain that can only come from having your insides eaten away by some cancerous predator. Her determination and strength still amazes me. She is one of the strongest people that I have ever met. There were at least 3 other spots dotted along her spinal cord, a few on her rib cage, one in her hip bone, and one in the lymph node under her arm. It was hard to imagine where one would even begin to treat her. The doctors agreed that using radiation to shrink the one expanding her bone, and causing so much pain in her back needed to be the first focus.

And so it began. Kecia would drive (or be driven) to the Cancer Treatment Center every day for 5 weeks. Each day they would take new scans which acted like a map of her body to ensure that the tumor was hit in the precisely desired location. Each day she would lay perfectly still while the poison worked its magic on her body and each day she prayed that this was more than just a futile attempt at buying her time until she was ready to accept the inevitable. Each day the members of Kecia’s prayer chain grew until it reached nearly a thousand at last estimate. And the letters, cards and emails of support poured in. How then was it possible that as she lay on that table, with time to do nothing but think, did she feel so alone? Was it because none of these people could truly understand what it means to stare death in the face? Was it because each of them, at the end of the day, got to go home to their families and feel safe, healthy and blessed? Or was it because she suspected that most of them believed they already knew what the outcome of treatment would be? We can’t know for sure because Kecia didn’t really talk about it. She insisted on staying strong for her parents and putting on a front that implied she knew she would get better. I talked to a friend of mine that was a nurse. She informed me that radiation and chemo are so hard on the body that given the location of Kecia’s tumors, we would be lucky if Kecia even made it 6 months. While I know it was intended to “prepare” me, I chose not to accept that. And I certainly didn’t pass that information on to Kecia. We were fighting Cancer, not accepting it! She needed to hear the possibilities not the statistics. She would NOT be a statistic. She would be the exception! And so, day after day as the medical team lifted Kecia’s body up on the radiation table, one thousand prayer warriors lifted up her request for complete healing to the Lord!

Chapter 2 - The Eye of the Storm

It’s difficult to put into words exactly how one is feeling as they go through this process of “accepting” the unthinkable. I can only imagine how Kecia actually felt as she came to grips with the news she was forced to tell everyone who loves her. For me, it was a time of great “role confusion”. I wanted to be there for Kecia in whatever way that was. I just didn’t know how to do that. When she would talk about not treating the Cancer, I would feel a heavy sickness in the pit of my stomach and my mind would scream “tell her she can’t do that…she has to try and treat it…she can’t just do nothing”. Surely it was my job to be her cheerleader, right? Wasn’t this the part where I encouraged her to do whatever it took to get better? Isn’t that how we are supposed to support a person in Kecia’s situation? It seemed so. But I would always stop myself. As much as I hated to admit it, there was another way in which she may need my support. Over the next 4 days I prepared myself for the horrible idea that it might be my job to support her in doing nothing. I might have to be the one who told her it was okay if she didn’t want to endure the endless rounds of chemo and the misery and sickness that would accompany it. It might be my job to help her die. I knew that Kecia didn’t want to die. What 28 year old in the prime of their life does? But I did understand that if there was no chance of getting better, and if chemotherapy could only buy her a few more miserable months, then I was only being selfish to expect her to endure that for the benefit of those she would eventually be leaving behind. I immediately began praying fervently for Kecia ; for peace, for comfort from her debilitating pain, for clarity of thought as she made life and death decisions, and for a miracle on her behalf. According to the doctors, only a miracle could save her, so that’s what I asked for.

The first of my prayers was answered when Kecia’s true spirit emerged through the fog of fear and confusion. The determination and fight that has gotten her through so many difficult times in her young life erupted in full force. She decided she was not ready to go willingly at this point. She refused to lay down and die (quite literally) and geared herself up for the fight of her life. She knew this would no doubt be the most difficult and frightening thing she would ever do, but she would not do it alone. The first few days following her decision to seek treatment were like a blurr of activity. When asked how this was all going to play out, her doctor said “first we will try to control the cancer growth in an effort to buy you 3 or 4 months. If we are successful we will go for 6 months, and then a year. If we can get past a year we will look for another and another..one at a time and hopefully they will have a treatment that can rid the bone of cancer in time for you.” Honestly, that didn’t sound too encouraging, but we chose to hang on to the last of his words. We made the phrase “until there’s a cure” our motto. It had a realistic sound to it. It was a goal that seemed reachable. With all the money that goes into cancer research there could be a treatment for bone cancer in 5 years. That would be our finish line. That would be Kecia’s light at the end of her dark and frightening tunnel. She would just have to be here 5 years from now, whatever that took.

Her doctors set the ball in motion immediately because they knew there was not a moment to waste. Her Cancer was growing at enormous rates and time was not her friend. She had surgery to implant a medi-port in her chest. She underwent days of full body scanning so they could get accurate measurements and precise locations of her tumors. And radiation began within a week of diagnosis. In the meantime, friends and family rallied around her for encouragement and support. Prayer chains were enacted. Meals were delivered. The actual words were never spoken, but somehow, we all silently agreed that while Kecia was on the path for recovery, we would not speak of the grim and terrifying prognosis she was given that first day. We would not play the “what if” game. We would be single minded in her fight against Cancer. She had conveyed to us that she only wanted to undergo treatment if there was a chance that she could beat it. So with her decision to treat, we chose to believe that her chance at beating Cancer would come in the form of a miracle.

Chapter 1 - The Diagnosis

Imagine that you are a beautiful, young, successful woman who has just received her Master’s Degree in Counseling. You are working a full time job to pay the bills, a part time job to fulfill your internship hours and another part time job to pay off your new education. Somehow, you still make time for friends and enjoy a good movie, wings at the local sports club, and boating on the lake. You have a new boyfriend. He is handsome, hardworking, easy to talk to, and most importantly…makes you feel like the most important person in the world. Life is good! Except for that nagging pain in your back. You see a doctor…muscle relaxers don’t fix that “pulled muscle”. You see a chiropractor…steroids don’t fix that “herniated disk”. After several months of increasing pain you have scans done at the Sports Medicine Clinic and your entire world crashes around you in a matter of seconds! Just 2 weeks after your 28th birthday you are told that you have stage 4 breast cancer. It has already spread to your spine, hip bones, ribs, and one lymph node under your arm. You try so hard to process what the doctor is saying. You should be asking lots of important questions but all you can think is CANCER, I’m Dying…CANCER…STAGE 4…I’m DYING…HOW DO I TELL MY MOM…THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENIG TO ME!!! But it is. You are shaking and you don’t hear yourself ask the question, but you must have because he says “Maybe a year…but probably less.”

You leave the office and sit in your car crying hysterically. You have to tell someone. You need to talk about it to make it seem real but you can’t tell your mom. You are her only child, her best friend and she might not be able to take it. You are terrified but feel an overwhelming need to protect her. You call your aunt instead and when she picks up the phone the words just spill out. “I have stage 4 CANCER. It’s spread everywhere! I’m DYING! I can’t tell mom! PROMISE ME you won’t tell mom yet! Oh God, I’m Dying!” You repeat everything you can remember about what the doctor said….more tests, appointments to make…discuss treatment…You don’t know if you even want to treat it. If you are going to die anyway why be miserable with chemotherapy and more sickness? It’s hard to breath, your shaking, and that pain in your back is taunting you. You can picture the pain for what it really is now that you know it’s true identity. You think you can actually feel yourself dying. You can feel the Cancer eating away at you and you hate your own body. Everything you have accomplished thus far…everything you know and everything you have done..is irrelevant. None of it is important. None of it can help you now. The entire focus of your life has been changed in the past 2 hours. You remember being told “we can operate on the breast, but there is currently no cure for cancer once it is in the bones.” The realization of what that means floods you. You will not see your 29th birthday. You will never open the private practice you and your aunt dreamed of opening together. You won’t get married or have children. You won’t take that trip that you and your boyfriend had been planning.

You know you’ll talk to your mom tonight and you won’t be able to hide it. You decide to tell your parents, but you sit in the parking lot for a long time before you head that way. You want to pull yourself together before you go tell them. You are about to change their entire world. You fear it might destroy them!


This story is true. It is about my niece Kecia. She is my sister’s only child and my only niece. Not that it would matter if there were others. Our loss would be the same. I was only 10 when she was born and I love her dearly. I had originally gone to school to be a teacher. She had gotten her Bachelor’s in business but several years ago we were both looking for a career change and after much searching we decided to go back to college together. We would both get our Master’s in Counseling and open our own private practice. We are opposites when it comes to personality. I am outgoing, consider myself funny, very social, and enjoy a crowd. Kecia is quiet, a perfectionist when it comes to herself, hates the lime-light, enjoys small groups of close friends, and doesn’t think I’m so funny. But we are both avid animal lovers and we agreed on the path that our business should take. We were determined to help others using animal assisted therapy rather than just traditional counseling and we spend the next 2 years of school planning for our futures. We took all of our classes together. We studied together, critiqued each others papers, complained about teachers, and always worked together on group projects. Kecia said she hated sitting with me in class because she liked to sit on the back row and “just blend in”, but I always raised my hand to join class discussions. I sometimes embarrassed her because something said in class would strike me as funny and I would get us both giggling to the point of inappropriate. We would try to be polite but we couldn’t stop laughing and eventually we would excuse ourselves from class, laughing so hard there were tears in our eyes. Kecia told me one day after just such an event.. “if we we’re related I wouldn’t even be your friend.” Kecia worked full time while going back to school and I had just had baby #3 when we enrolled. Baby # 4 would come just a few weeks before we took our state board exams. It was not easy. But it is an experience I wouldn’t trade. That time we spent studying, worrying, and passing together is priceless to me. It quite possibly gave our relationship the strength it would need to face the days that were ahead in Kecia’s future.