I Will Survive: It’s Just About… Life.

Survivor, 2012

As long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive. I’ve got all my life to live, I’ve got all my love to give. I will survive. I will survive. – Gloria Gaynor

Tomorrow we’ll be up and out long before first light, so I figured I would write down a few thoughts before we make the first stop Sunday morning at the Komen Race for the Cure: Survivor Tent.

We’re now immersed in Act 2 of our journey, 17 months cancer-free. It seems almost impossible to believe that this time last year we were still one month away from another surprise in Act 1, learning something was wrong my wife’s breast implants, which led to another surgery six weeks down the road, December 6th, 2012. What’s just as crazy is I don’t have to try and remember certain dates, they are all there now, in black and white, in the pages of a book, which at this time last year, wasn’t even a concrete thought, or vision. Today we are three weeks into the launch of It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story. This time last year we were still in the midst of making sure Debbie got through it all, tomorrow, after the Race, I will be selling and signing books right across the street, at Greetings & Readings in Hunt Valley. Crazy how life can change, how hope can bring you full circle, how you can turn adversity around.

Deb & Her Sister Alisa

Last year, the weekend of The Run, I posted a journal entry on the Caringbrige website, which is now page 112 in the book, (an excerpt): “There’s no cure. There’s no end. But for too many it is The End. We don’t just Run for those people; we grieve for them – mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, cousins who will never see the cure. For us, those left behind, a cure can’t come soon enough.

The numbers still tell the grim tale. Over 40,000 people will die from breast cancer this year. It’s still the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 40 and 55. Just because you’re born a woman, you don’t deserve it. No one does. It’s not fair. It’s heartbreaking. So we Run… to find an answer… to find a better fix… to find a cure. We’ll never find a reason for the sacrifices that have to be made to defeat it, nor the ultimate crushing blow some families have to face when the devil gets the best of those they love the most. So F*CK CANCER.”
Bethann, Deb, Sharon

In many ways the fact I just quoted from my own book is surreal. The fact that Debbie is healthy and on the other side of this battle is real and f*cking exhilarating. Tomorrow we will join thousands of other survivors, including my mother-in-law Sharon, our good friend, Bethann Talbot, our friend Ellen Logwood, the list goes on an on. And it’s a list which is way too long. My own little girls, not so little anymore, now understand the message and appreciate the meaning of it all. And tomorrow they too will walk to honor heroes who help shape their lives and the one who not only shapes it, but in many ways defines it, the one who sacrificed for them, their Mom.

We love you Debbie. We love you Survivors. We miss you Warriors. We honor you All.

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Mark

Mark Brodinsky, Author
It Takes 2.
#1 Amazon Best Seller
www.spouses-story.com
markbrodinsky@gmail.com