Anniversaries
Just in from vacation, a time of much needed relaxation after one of the craziest months of my life. My family spent five days on the beach, where I read five books and wrote as much as I could. Oh yeah, I also ate about a pound of guacamole each day.
On May 31, I was out on the beach, writing, when I suddenly remembered it was my anniversary.
We have so many anniversaries. First and foremost, we have wedding anniversaries; my twenty-second is coming up in July. My parents just had their fiftieth. We also have work anniversaries. I will have worked at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals for twelve years this November, and in July I’ll begin my fourteenth year as a worker for the state of Oklahoma, knock on wood. Birthdays are an anniversary of sort. I’ve had 45 of those.
There are anniversaries related to the time we first met someone or went on a date, anniversaries of how long we’ve lived in a certain city or house, and anniversaries of a big event in our lives, like graduation from high school or, for me, the publication of my first book (November 2006, by the way).
Not all anniversaries are happy ones. Each April my family grieves on the anniversary of my sister’s tragic death from a car accident. There are many anniversaries like this. September 11. The anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. I had a dear friend write to me a few days ago about her anniversary as a widow, her husband having suddenly died eleven years earlier.
Cancer patients often have more anniversaries than they can shake a stick at. I just “celebrated” making it twenty months since being diagnosed with stage four liver cancer. In September it will have been five years since my arm was taken. (Please, spare me the “give me ten” jokes.)
And on May 31, 2009, while sitting on a Mexican beach, I became an eight year cancer survivor. That is, it had been eight years since I first discovered something was not quite right with the triceps muscle of my right arm. A lot has happened since then, more highs and lows than I could have ever imagined. But, even though I’m receiving chemo as we speak, I’m still ticking and hoping to see many more anniversaries, whether they be anniversaries of triumphs or tragedies.
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