Living

I think it was spring of 1998, or maybe 1997. It's been so long now that I can't remember exactly which year Gena was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Like many cases of ovarian cancer, it had set up housekeeping throughout Gena's abdomen. Her doctors did their best to remove the tumors and started her on an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy. Many of us composed our eulogies.

Now it's spring of 2007. The woman who has taught so many school children through the years (one of them, my own!) has taught a broad circle of us how to carry on, how to persevere, how to live. She just plain never stops!

Here is a photo from September, 2001. I had told Gena I was signing up for a floral design class at the community college. Whether she could actually use those credits toward her teaching recertification or not, I don't know, but she signed up to take the class with me. What a treat! I got to spend one evening a week with Gena, playing with flowers! In what has become an annual event, Gena had surgery in the spring and didn't attend the last classes of the second semester - she sent her daughter!

By the time we took the floral design class together, I'd told Gena all the stuff I would have said in a eulogy back in 1998 or so. Since that course, Gena has gone on to learn SCUBA diving and taken a couple dive trips to Sea Base w/ her sons' Boy Scout troop and a dive trip with her daughters. Last summer, after her spring surgery, Gena went to Space Academy in Huntsville. And all the while, she's taught classes full of sixth graders.

Gena is a woman of faith. She tries to get to mass daily. She feels the power of prayer. I am a liberal Episcopalian who loves to listen to the stories of my Catholic friend's walk with God. We are both certain that God's love surrounds us. Today, God worked through the hands of the medical staff at Walter Reed and once more removed tumors from Gena's abdomen. God cradled Gena while a heated chemotherapy solution steeped in her body. God will both guard and guide Gena's recovery.

There are a lot more Gena stories. I'm going to the kitchen in a minute to raise a glass in the sure knowledge that Gena will add to her stories. Then I'll pick up my Anglican rosary, give thanks for today and ask God for continued healing of the incredible Catholic woman who is my friend. My prayer is that her story, of living a full life with cancer, will inspire many to live full lives - no matter what.