Previously published on Caring Bridge.
Your urgency isn’t my emergency.
A friend once told me this in relation to our kids. I thought it was amazing. It helped me frame things for my children and teach them about patience. I experienced it this morning.
I am brushing my teeth, trying to get ready, and Cora is insisting I fix the time on her watch. Then Quinn is insisting I help her get dressed. This thought passed through my mind.
Once I was able to finish getting ready, I had the capacity to help them. Honestly, they problem solved much of it in their own. I was proud of them, but still a bit annoyed that they didn’t try to do it for themselves first.
Then I realized, when you are a cancer mom. You are the one who needs it “right now”. You forget that doctors have other patients. You forget that they have a life out of the hospital. Your child is important. They are the emergency…they could die if someone doesn’t pay attention.
Then, unfortunately for some of us, you become bereaved parents. You no longer need those doctors. Now you need the foundations, researchers and others to help you pick up the pieces and begin to build a legacy in memory of your child.
I am the urgency, I am the child who needs something done “right now”. This is an emergency to me. This isn’t because I don’t value the time of others or that I don’t value the help or those around me and all that they are doing. It is because I will do anything possible to distract myself from the reality I am facing. My child died, Sloane died, and I am in a constant state of urgency to make sure she is remembered and her death brings one ounce of positive into this world.
