Weight of the World
I mayhaps have figure one reason for my restless sleep. It is my belief that there are times when our deceased loved ones reach out from beyond the Veil in the hopes that their story is told. I think that this might be one of those times. Perhaps its a way to remind me that I should be happy where things are now and how far I had fallen. I have no reason to put this down, except for the fact that I must. I must put this down and preserve the memories before they fade with the distance of experience.



FROM DONNA'S OWN WORDS
I have been cleaning out my computer. And lo and behold, I found hidden deep within a file within a file within a file this stuff written by Donna. Again, it's my duty to give my late wife a opportunity to be heard and why I love her so much:

Life is remarkable. I really don’t think that it happens by chance. The thing is, there is a plan out there, you just don’t get privy to it. When you see the big picture, it’s really too late most of the time. What really has shocked me is how one sentence, one question, one desire or observation can alter your life. These life altering situations can happen and you don’t even realize what happened for years most of the time. What would my life be without hearing things like, “We’re really short of housing, for instance we have three kids coming in from Alabama tomorrow and no place for them to stay.” Those guys from Alabama opened the world of drum corps open to me and one of them, Danny, became my big brother. Or the time I returned from the State Fair and my mom said, “We’re going out for dinner with the Harmons, so go clean up.” I didn’t want to go to dinner, I was tired and didn’t know what a Harmon was…but they became my second family and Garrick, their youngest son, became my best friend. When I think of how dramatically Chris Chenault changed my life as an adult I shudder at the thought of never meeting him. I met him through American On-line in a poetry room. He had actually left the room and another girl coaxed him back in because I had organized how everyone would share their poetry…he read mine and stayed. We met the next weekend and fell in love…the rest is history.

When I moved to Weslaco, Texas in 1992, I was just looking for a bit of job stability. As a teacher in Kansas, I didn’t feel that because districts were having budget cuts and nontenured teachers couldn’t count on a contract for the next year. I moved to Weslaco because this is where my sister, Julie, was teaching and I knew I could be hired here. What I didn’t know was that when I came down there was a hiring freeze! Well, I was hired anyway. I was hired to teach Sophomore through Senior English as a self-paced alternative school for non-traditional high school students. It was the most rewarding job I ever had! My students were older teens who chose to go to our school because the schedule was more flexible and fit into their work or family situations better. Many of my young adult students were married and already parents! While I was there, I also went to UT Pan American and earned my masters in Education to become a reading specialist. I was a work horse…but I needed to be because the truth was I was incredibly depressed. It was one of the worst times of my life. The year before I moved to Texas I seemed to be a top teaching candidate and well-sought out applicant. I was devastated when I was let go due to budget cuts. Then on top of that, nothing seemed to be going right for my best-friend, Garrick. We were super close through high school and college and whenever he hurt, I hurt. He had graduated from West Point and become engaged. He was commissioned to Hawaii and everything seemed ideal. Then his fiance (the first of three) dumped him and he wasn’t the same. The week I found out I wasn’t going to have my contract renewed, he had just moved to Hawaii. I felt so alone. It was a feeling I just couldn’t lift. I tried moving to Weslaco to start over, but I just got more depressed. I took so many antidepressants…! It was a real struggle for a couple of years. During that time I just buried myself in work and racked up a huge credit card debt trying to make possessions a sign of happiness or something. It was ridiculous.

When I met my husband, I wasn’t looking for love. It just happened. We met on-line and found out that both of us had marched in drum and bugle corps. I had been a Sky Ryder from 1984-1988 and he had marched in Phantom Regiment in 1989 and 1990. What pulled us together and made us want to talk to each other was that we knew a lot of the same people. I felt I could trust him. He was pretty authentic. I challenged him to find my phone number and call me. We talked from midnight to 8 a.m. The next evening he drove from Kingsville to Weslaco to meet me. Neither of us was interested in love or dating, we were just kind of homesick for a drum corps friend and felt we had found that in each other. He reminded me so much of the guys that I had marched with and been friends with for years. As the story goes, we kissed by the end of the first evening, the next day I actually said, “I love you” for the first time in my life, and the next weekend he proposed. I never believed in love at first sight, but I do believe that God just took over my life when I met Chris and put some good things in motion.

It’s not that I don’t believe God was there before. He was there, I just wasn’t listening. God has always been part of my life. I was raised Roman Catholic. My parents sent me to a Catholic grade school, Holy Cross, and I ate up the doctrine and was the perfect little Catholic school girl. When my parents sent me to public school in 7th grade, I felt like I was being thrown into the devil’s den of sin or something. My nuns had warned me about public school… “Those kids just didn’t have discipline and prayer in their lives!” Now I know that the sisters just never knew those kids.

I started to realize God was working in my life through my marriage. Three weeks after I was married I called my mother totally freaked out and said, “What were you thinking? Why did you let me marry this guy?” She thought that something was wrong. Did Chris turn from a prince into a wife-beating frog? We seemed so perfectly fit together!

“Mom! How could you do it? How could you just sit up there in Kansas and accept it when I said less than a month after a lonely Christmas that I was engaged? I must have been crazy! I barely knew this guy and I just flipped out on our second date and said, ‘Sure, I’ll marry you!’ Mother, I’d never even been in love before and suddenly I was engaged!”

“You were in love Donna! Nothing I could have said could stop you. Anyway, I realized early on that something bigger than you and Chris was in control. Something outside of you was guiding you towards the wedding the entire year. Never once did you doubt your decision. You just accepted that you had to marry him. I couldn’t explain it to any of my friends, but I knew that you and Chris were meant to be. I couldn’t pick you out a better mate.”

When I admitted to Chris that I couldn’t believe we just fell in love after twenty-four hours and were engaged after a week, he just laughed and pointed upward, “It wasn’t us, it was God.” Yeah, it must have been something from Heaven. Something not from this world. I couldn’t explain it or explain why. It didn’t fit with any belief I had ever had.

Chris and I always wanted children. Within the first month of our engagement, we were trying to decide names for our first born. I never used birth control, I believed that since we were so in love and such good people God would give us a child. After six months of trying though, we became frustrated. I started searching myself to figure out why I wasn’t pregnant. Didn’t I deserve a child? Didn’t I deserve God’s blessing? What sin had I committed that was so great that God wasn’t giving me a child. I began to feel guilty…maybe it’s because we weren’t going to mass. Maybe it’s because I never converted my husband, and it wouldn’t work to raise a child without a religious union in the Church. I’m ashamed by some of those thoughts. One day in September Chris was gone at a football game and my friend Martha invited me over to her house to eat finger foods with her. She had planned a singles meeting for her church, but nobody came. A half hour after I was there, another older woman from her church showed up. They started sharing the Bible with me and Martha told me how blessed I was to have found Chris. I loved talking about the Bible with Martha. She seemed to know so many stories and seemed to glow in Christ’s glory. I knew she was special. Her friend did one thing that stayed with me after that night. Before I left she asked me what my biggest burden was and told me that we needed to surrender it to Christ. I told her I was wanting a child yet never conceived. She told me to never give up hope and told me about Elizabeth and John the Baptist. She had waited and waited, then was blessed with one of the most important religious leaders leading up to Christ. She told me that God knew me and my wants and needs. He knew my handprint before I was born. She told me that her theory was that Heaven was full of our future children’s souls and they were just waiting on God to give them the signal that we were ready for them. As she spoke to me, my heart opened to her love for God. I saw she was special too. I started to feel that maybe I was special too. Maybe Chris was right and God was who put us together. Maybe God was waiting for the right moment to give us a child. She told me she felt God would answer my request soon.

The next day, Chris and I made love in the afternoon. We weren’t trying to make a baby, the timing wasn’t right and I knew it. Afterwards, I was resting in bed and suddenly felt an overwelming sense of love. I saw a young teenager that looked an awful lot like a cross between me and my brother-in-law. I was confused until I suddenly heard or felt a voice saying, “Don’t worry, he is coming.” The next month, I conceived. Zachary Daniel Chenault was born June 14, 1997. We were blessed.

No one could tell me why I was sick. At first the OBGYNs told me that I was just post-partum. I obviously had hemeroids, I was a bit anemic in my late pregnancy and had hemoraged after delivery. It would take awhile to regain my zip, I just needed to eat more protein. After a few months, I went to my family doctor who felt I must have had food poisoning. A week later he decided that I had developed lactose intolerance. Several members of my family and my inlaws convinced me that it was totally normal to develop food alergies or intolerances after pregnancy. I tried to see Zachary as a blessing and just accept the reality that I would never drink milk again without being sick.

By the time Thanksgiving came around, Chris was just so worried about me. I was so worn down and could barely stay awake long enough after work to feed the baby before I’d go off to bed. I thought that I just wasn’t eating correctly and that with the stress of my work situation were just playing havoic with my body. I was only frustrated because it was taking me much longer than my friends to recover from pregnancy. At Thanksgiving we stayed at home because I was too tired to travel. Our Thanksgiving menu was limited to what I could digest with out being sick. In the middle of supper, Chris said the most important thing he has ever said to me, “Donna, I’m worried. The doctor has never really found out what is wrong with you. He’s never done tests. You just aren’t doing well. If it’s really a food allergy, then I could accept it. I’m just so worried that it’s more. I want you to demand they run tests.”

I went to the family doctor again and he couldn’t believe that my food problem was getting more and more sensitive. If something had the least bit of milk in it, I couldn’t digest it. I couldn’t even digest lactose-free milk. I was only eating meat, canned fruit and cooked vegetables. He put me on some medicine, then asked me to come back on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, he told me I needed to go to a specialists. Good, an allergist could finally get down to the bottom of this. My appointment was made for January 7th with Dr. Badiga at Mid-Valley Gastroentology. Whoa, a Gastroentologist. Was this serious?

On January 7th, I walked into the office. I was so young, they thought I was a new drug salesman or something. When I was put in the examining room I saw all of the digestive posters showing all of the problems in the digestive system and became very nervous.

“Miss, how’s Dr. Badiga?”

“He’s very nice. Very professional. Don’t worry, he’ll explain everything carefully.”

“But, what will he do?”

“He’s going to take a medical history and possibly a rectal exam to rule out possibilities or test for a problem. It won’t hurt. He will explain everything before he does it, and I’ll be here the entire time.”

The nurse was genuinely kind and saw my concern. “You know, I wouldn’t work for him unless I thought he was the best.”

The doctor knocked on the door and entered. He was a tall handsome Indian man. When he talked, I was attentive and entrapped in his accent trying to understand everything he said. If I looked the least bit puzzled, the nurse would repeat it in case I couldn’t understand his accent. I could understand the accent with no problem, I was just listening so intently because he was the first person who seemed to have answers and explanations. After he took my personal history and found out the smallest details of my history of digestion, he started to talk about Chrohn’s disease and colitis. Perhaps I had one of these diseases for some time and it had gone dormant, then after the pregnancy it flaired up again. When I left, I felt relieved. I walked out of his office with orders to meet him on the 9th for a colonoscopy so he could evaluate the damage in my intestines and make a diagnosis so I could start treatment as soon as possible.

I woke up in a recovery room after the colonoscopy. The nurses were standing away from me discussing shampoo…something about whether Panteen was really worth all of the hype. “Hey, it is the best shampoo!” I groggily chimed in. The nurses turned around and were suddenly quiet, “You better go tell Dr. Badiga she’s awake.” The nurses ignored me for a moment, then one came over, “Sweety, the doctor is going to come in and talk to you before we take you back to your room.” I felt pretty special, he really was taking care of me.

The doctor walked in and Chris followed and stood at the foot of my bed. Dr. Badiga opened the chart and began the sentence that changed my life, “I was quite pleased to see how clean your colon and lower intestine was…” he showed me a picture of a healthy swath of intestine, “until I saw this tumor up by your spleen. This is your tumor.” He pointed to a picture of an ugly egg-shaped blob. “This is your cancer. This is colon-cancer. I feel you need to talk to a surgeon today. I’ve already called for Dr. Hillmy to meet you in your room in a few minutes. You may want to think about this for a few minutes. I will come back to your room in a while in case you have questions.”

When he left, I looked at Chris and smiled so I couldn’t cry. “Well, it’s a relief to finally have a diagnosis isn’t it?” He just stood there. Finally he came over and held my hand, “I love you. I’m going to be here for you no matter what. I’m sorry that it’s cancer.”

As soon as we returned to the room, Dr. Hillmy walked in. He was a young Egyptian guy with a spring in his step. He took my hand, “So, I hear we have some cancer in there. We need to have surgery as soon as possible so you don’t get sicker. I could either take it out today, or you could come back on Monday and I could take it out then.” The way he held my hand, the way he looked at me and my husband, I instantly trusted him. I knew I couldn’t handle worrying about it all weekend.

I looked at my husband, I looked at my new doctor, “Please, just take it out today.” We discussed a few more details and then he left. I was so calm. “Chris, I’ve got to call my parents.”

I called my Mom. She wasn’t home. I started to dial my Dad’s office, then hung up. How could I tell my Dad that I had cancer? His own mother died of cancer! He had always told me that there was cancer on his side of the family.

“Is Don there? This is his daughter, Donna.”

“Yes, he is, but he’s in with a client. Could I take a message and have him return your call?” His secretary had known me for years. She knew I was three states away and a teacher. I wouldn’t be calling during work hours unless something was wrong.

“Well Janie, this is an emergency and I need my parents right now. I can’t find Mom, so could you please interrupt Dad right now?” There was a pause, no response on the line. “Just one moment Donna.”

“Yes Donna, can I help you?” My Dad always had a professional tone on the phone. I could just imagine his client sitting across the desk from him. I didn’t want to tell him like this. I didn’t want him to have to tell Mom.

“Dad, I just talked to the doctor and he said I need surgery, so I’m going in for surgery as soon as possible today. The thing is, it’s not colitis or Chrons’ disease like I told Mom the other night. He found an egg-sized tumor in my intestine up by my spleen.” I just couldn’t say it.

“Oh my God. Well Donna, maybe it’s nothing, maybe…”

“Dad, it is. It’s cancer.”

I could hear a creak and could just see it. My Dad was leaning far back in his office chair looking up at the ceiling trying not to look at his client. “I’ll have your Mom on the first flight out today. Could you call back to the office as soon as you know when you’re going in? God Donna, I wish I could come, but…”

“I know Dad, it’s tax season and you’re short of help. Really, you don’t need to send Mom. It’ll cost too much.”

“Don’t you worry about money. You’re Mom wouldn’t stand for staying here and you know it. Have you told Julie yet?”

“Julie…no, but I’ll call Dave, he can tell her.”

I didn’t want to tell Julie, but I wanted her to leave work and be here with me NOW. Julie was also a teacher in Weslaco and my closest sister. She was my best girlfriend and she practically raised me after my mom went to work. I hung up with Dad and my husband took my hand, “Oh, that was hard…” I wiped my eye. For the first time it hit me; I had cancer. I called my sister’s house and Dave didn’t answer. He was probably asleep or out running or something. I wasn’t going to leave a message, I wanted my sister now.

Chris offered to call Julie for me, but I knew that I had to say it myself. The more I said it, the more real it was. Anyway, everyone at her school knew who I was. “Hello, this is Donna Chenault. I need to speak to Julie De Leon right now. This is a family emergency. Could you please page her classroom?” I was in luck. It was her planning period and she was in the office.

“Julie, I had my test today and they found cancer. I’m going to have surgery today. Could you take off from school and come to the hospital right now?”

“Oh my…are they sure? Are you OK? When? I’ll be there. I’m leaving in five minutes. Is Chris OK? Did you call Mom? Don’t worry, I’ll be there.” She didn’t even give me a chance to talk, she just hung up.

“She’s coming.” I just smiled at Chris and sighed. It was over, I didn’t have to call anyone else.“Donna, you need to call your principal. You were going to go back to work this afternoon, remember? And I need to call Mr. Isadore, my parents…” Dr. Hillmy walked back in the room.

“Everyone OK? Well, we’re getting ready for the surgery if you’re still up for it.”

“Yes, just please get it out. I’m so tired of being sick. I couldn’t sit around for another weekend and worry about it.”

“Good. We’re going to take you to another room and a nurse will come in and take your vitals, put on your surgical hose, and ask you a few questions. I’d like to take a moment and explain what will happen in surgery.” He sat on the edge of my bed. “I’m going in with a lateral cut. My goal is to remove all of the cancer. There is the possibility that I may have to take your spleen also depending on how the intestine around it looks. You will be fine without a spleen, you’ll just have to take medicine. I will be taking out a section of your intestine and then hooking it back together. I will also be taking out several lymph nodes to see if the cancer had spread beyond the intestine. There’s the possibility that when I go in I may see another organ where the cancer is spread. If that happens, I’ll come out and talk to Chris before I continue.” The doctor paused and I took a deep breath. This was for real. “With your age, everything is on our side. Let’s not think about the worst until it happens.”

The doctor left and I was transported to another room on another floor. Shortly after I arrived there, Julie and her husband Dave met up with us. I was sitting up straight indian style on my bed. I didn’t look or feel like I had cancer. I felt relieved, relieved that they found out what was wrong. Chris was pretty calm under the circumstances. Julie was strong and supportive, but Dave was showing his nerves. To try and keep a façade of calmness, Dave was joking around. He took one of the latex gloves from the lavatory and put it over his head. He looked like a poster boy for safe sex or something. We were all laughing just to keep our minds off of the seriousness of the situation. At 1:00 I sent Chris to go get himself some lunch. We thought the doctor said it would be about 3:00 before they would be ready for me in surgery, but at 1:30 they took me to get prepped and Chris wasn’t back. It was OK with me, I knew that he loved me and would be praying for me during surgery.

In the prep room they put a hair net on me, started a new drip in my I.V. and talked to me about my surgery. The nurses couldn’t believe that at 29 I was having colon cancer. I was calm and relaxed. Looking back on this I should add that I was naïve…I had no idea of the pain and fear this surgery would cause me! I had no idea how this one day was going to change everything. I just completely trusted that my doctors would take care of me.

I woke up in a room. Through a daze of drug fog, I could see my Mom. The room seemed to be full of people, but I just focused on her. It was dark outside, probably way past visiting hours, but she was there as promised. “Mom, I love you.” She was telling me that people were calling and Chris had been talking to friends and family. I couldn’t follow it, but I knew people were worried. She said something about Garrick, and something about my oldest sister Cheryl. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

A year and a half later I told my Mom that it was so comforting to me that she came to the hospital as soon as she got to town. I told her that I always worried that I had hurt Chris by addressing her that night and not talking to him. It was something that always bothered me, but the reality was that I had always wanted my mommy when I was sick. I was happy she was there. As I was describing the memory to Mom, she told me I had it all wrong…she was there in the room alone. My husband wasn’t there, my sister wasn’t there, the nurses weren’t there. I distinctly remember my husband in the chair. I remember the nurses standing in white next to my bed adjusting the I.V. and monitors. Mom explained that maybe I had been awake other times and my mind put everything together in one memory, but I believe it was something else. I think Jesus was watching over me and his angels were taking care of me.

The next morning my room began to fill with flowers. My mother sent flowers, my sisters sent flowers, my in-laws…everyone seemed to be showering me with flowers. My mother was there bright and early as the nurses made sure I was awake and talking. Recovery was going to start today. I would be dangling legs, getting out of bed, sitting in a chair. This seemed so unreal. I was catheterized, had inflating cuffs on my legs, an I.V. in my arm, monitors still on my chest. I was afraid to move even my hand!

I began to remember the night before. Someone was so shocked by the news that they were driving in. Was it Garrick? Wasn't he still on vacation for a few more days? Surely he wouldn’t come in from Oklahoma by himself. He had been through so much lately. I had just seen him last week and he was miserable trying to cope with the fact that his second attempt at marriage failed…two fiances and two called off weddings. He had enough grief without me adding to it. Was it Cheryl? She and Tom had just visited in October. They didn’t have a lot of money. Would she come? Ever since I married Chris, Cheryl and I had greatly improved our relationship.

“Mom, who’s coming?” Mom couldn’t believe I remembered. It was Cheryl. Cheryl was on her way from Tuscon. Before my Mom left Kansas, she told my sister, Ellen, and she called Cheryl. Cheryl immediately left work, packed a bag, and left Arizona.

A knock on the door and a friendly face, David Eaton from First Baptist church just happened to be doing his rounds and wanted to drop by and see how I was. He was Zachary’s daycare director. I thanked him for taking care of things the day before when I went to surgery. The visit was short, but it ended in prayer. He asked God to be with us and help me heal.

When he left, my mother commented that it was really nice of him to come pray with us. He didn’t have to. Afterall, I was a member of another church, the Catholic Church.

I remember Cheryl’s arrival. She just came in and took over. Was I comfortable? Were the nurses treating me well? Was I in pain? How was I taking all of this? She helped me make a list of things I wanted Chris to find and bring from the house. She promised to help Chris take down the Christmas tree and put away our vacation bags. She promised to return the next morning.

Dr. Hillmy made his rounds and explained the surgery. He took out about eight inches of the intestine and about six lymph nodes. My spleen was still there. He thought he got it all. He sent everything to pathology and it would be a few days before we heard back. At that point, they could say how advanced the cancer was. He was upbeat and positive. I seemed to be doing well and handling everything fine. I felt good as long as the painkillers kept coming!

The days started to have a pattern. Cheryl would come in the morning and help me shower. I only had an I.V., so she would help me maneuver around that and wash my hair and suds up with the raspberry soaps and shampoos the science department at school had sent me. It was a very comforting part of the day. As we freshened up, she would tell me what Zachary had been up to. He was thrilled to see his Uncle Tom show up and Tom became the official baby-sitter. I seemed so under control and calm, and I explained that I had been thinking a lot about Grandma Scott and her battle with cancer. We talked about Grandma being such a strong woman. She seemed really touched by God.

Around eleven Mom would come in and the florists would begin all their deliveries. It was an exciting part of the day!! Mom and I would watch our soap operas together. Our viewing would be interrupted now and then by nurses, flower deliveries, or visitors. People all over seemed to know I was ill and were sending flowers and notes saying they were praying for me. Everyday Chris would visit me during his lunch hour. He was always thrilled to see my progress with the clear liquids and jello to solid foods. Eating was a struggle and something I didn’t want to do. If I didn’t have Mom or Chris standing there, I wouldn’t eat. The food was horrible, but they would find things I liked and make sure they showed up on my tray. When I was allowed solid food, I was totally turned off by the food the cafeteria served, so Mom asked Dr. Hillmy if she could bring in food. They agreed that it was a good idea to try and get me to eat anything. After lunch, Mom would make me walk and then I’d nap as she watched more soaps.

I most looked forward to the hours after four when Chris was off of work. It was a quiet comfort to have him around. He wouldn’t make me talk about how I felt, or what I went through during the day. He just listened to what I had to say and then shared his day. It was like any other day after work. He would read the paper and bring me my mail. Everyday there were more and more cards. Danny and Christine in Florida, Uncle Jimmy in Las Vegas, relatives of Chris’ that I’d never met in Illinois, former co-workers in Kansas, Mrs. Stoecklien my childhood babysitter, my mother’s dear friend Pat. I began to sense that people really cared and it was inspiring for me to push on.

When school was out, I would have visitors from work. On Monday, Ginny, the girl who taught across the hall from my room, was admitted to the hospital for surgery on a cyst on her ovary. We shared many visitors and sent messages between each other with our friends. The nurses wouldn’t let me see her because she had a fever.

My most memorable visitors were Sylvia and Kara. Sylvia was the science department head on our campus and the mother-hen to all. Even though she only looked 35, she was once the teacher of several teachers and administrators on our campus. Sylvia came by quickly one day after school and took my hands and tearfully explained to me that she had spent the weekend praying for me. Tears welled in my eyes because I couldn’t believe she cared so much. I had never really spent much time with her, she seemed busy and was running off to her next task. Kara was a genuinely nice math teacher. I’d never spent much time socializing with her, but I always wanted to spend more time with her. Kara actually stopped by a couple times while I was in the hospital and tried to bring magazines, game books, or something different to spend my time with.

I really shocked several people because I was not too upset with my diagnosis. I think most of the time in the hospital I spent just basking in the realization that there were so many people that really cared about me. People were writing, calling, sending flowers, visiting…I couldn’t get over it. Everyday I just woke up wondering who I would hear from next. Maybe it was all the morphine, but I remember smiling a lot. I wouldn’t let anyone around me say anything negative. At times I was the big cheerleader trying to convince everyone not to be upset. When friends and family would call long-distance, I was the one saying, “Everything will be alright.” Deep in my heart I knew that my life was finally on track. I had spent several years in deep depression, and when I met my husband in January of ’95, just two years earlier, everything changed. Once I fell in love with him, depression was gone forever. Marrying Chris was a dream I never thought would come true. When Zachary was born in June, I couldn’t believe how blessed I was. I never dreamed of having my own family. Things were going great. There was no way that I could let cancer take all of that away. I didn’t see how God could let me have cancer just to take all of that away either. It was just a stage of life that I’d have to get through.

January 14,1997, was the second anniversary of the day I met Chris. It was the anniversary of the day my life changed forever.

In January of ’95 I was exploring America On-line. Life was a little lonely. I had been teaching in Weslaco for a year and a half and had worked on my Masters since May. I was a work-a-holic and was never home. I had just returned from Christmas break and put a week of work under my belt. My classes at the university hadn’t started yet, so I had some time on my hands. That’s how I ended up on AOL. I met Chris in a poetry room. We were sharing poetry and he looked up my biography. He noticed I mentioned drum corps, so he IM’ed me to talk about drum corps. In ‘84-’88 I had marched in the Sky Ryders Drum and Bugle Corps and in ‘89-’90 he marched in Phantom Regiment. Then next time I talked to Chris I sarcastically asked him why he never called me. I had mentioned the night before that I lived in a town only two hours away from where he lived and that my number was listed. When I got off-line, he called and we talked on the phone from midnight to seven a.m.! I never felt awkward talking to him. I had this feeling that I had always known him. We shared the same opinions about many things. We shared drum corps war stories and found out we knew a lot of the same people. We loved the same people and were annoyed by the same people. When he told me he had a version of the ’87 Sky Ryders on video that I’d never seen, I casually invited him to come visit me. When we hung up that morning, I knew I would call him again and ask him to visit. Talking to him was like talking to my best friends from drum corps.

It was less than five hours after I hung up that I was on the phone begging him to come visit me that night! There was something about talking to him…a comfort that I hadn’t felt in so long…and I wasn’t going to let it go. I was an insomniac, so it didn’t bother me that I hadn’t slept, I just asked him to jump in a car and come see me. He promised to drive down after he took a nap.

After I knew he was on the road, I started to get nervous. What had I done? He could be a mass murderer or something! When I went down stairs to Marcy’s apartment, I expected her to tell me I was crazy. I figured she would know how I could get out of this meeting alive. Instead she told me the weirdest thing, she told me that he sounded like someone I would marry! She insisted on two things: I had to go clean up my apartment, and I had to wear something besides my typical shorts and sloppy sweatshirt with a ponytail. Reluctantly, I picked up my apartment and put on my best black jeans and purple silk shirt. I brushed out my hair and put on some make up. I hadn’t spent this much time on my appearance since I left Kansas. I returned to Marcy’s to hide out and spy. I would wait at her apartment and wait for him to drive up. If he looked like a mass murderer, I would stay at Marcy’s and not answer the door.

He drove up and got out of the car. Marcy tried to push me upstairs to go answer my door, “Donna! He’s a hotty!” He looked into my empty apartment rather worried, then I called out to him, “Are you Chris? I’m down here!” I figured it was best to meet him on neutral territory and get some feedback from Marcy.

He seemed nice. The only thing that didn’t seem right was that he was my height, 5’10” and not the 5’11” he had said. He was built-broad shoulders, a thick waist, and beautifully muscular legs. He was dressed in a long sleeved hooded t-shirt and shorts. He had a short dark hair and a quiet nerd quality.

Marcy pushed us out of her door and sent us out to dinner. She didn’t even give him a chance to put his bag in my apartment. We went to McAllen and ate dinner at the Olive Garden. We sat and resumed our conversation from the night before. I felt so at ease with him and by dessert I was hoping that he would want to come back to visit me again. I couldn’t believe that I had found someone to be friends with that was so much like my friends from high school and college. I had been feeling so disconnected since I had moved to Weslaco, and this guy seemed to bring me back to that feeling of home.

We went to a movie and he held my hand throughout it. He actually took my hand and kissed it. The only problem was that he wasn’t trying to kiss me. It was driving me crazy. I wanted to kiss him! After the movie, he drove me home and I let him bring his bag upstairs. He had brought his sleeping bag because we had discussed sleeping on the floor and watching drum corps videos all night long. We settled on the couch and I waited to kiss him. I was beginning to wonder if I had just imagined him kissing my hand because all he seemed interested in was looking at my drum corps scrapbooks. I was a bit put off and insulted to say the least. Finally I said I wanted to get more comfortable for the evening and went to my bedroom to change. Why did I dress up for this guy? I grabbed my favorite comfort clothes thinking they would protect me if he did try anything weird on me…I put on a gray wrestler suit type leotard with some cotton black jersey shorts over them and a big old purple sweatshirt. In the bathroom I took off my makeup carefully and threw my hair up in a pony tail…this guy wasn’t worth getting zits over by keeping my makeup on!!!!

Grabbing a pair of socks I came through the door declaring, “Hey, this is who I really am, like it or leave it!!!” He smiled and said I looked really comfortable! Before I sat down though, he had one request…did I have my Sky Ryder member jacket so he could see it? That was weird…and he was in luck… I had just brought it to Texas during Christmas break. It was one of the few things I had left behind in Kansas when I moved to TX the prior year!!!!

When I came out with the jacket he started smiling ear to ear!!! I pulled off the dry cleaning cover and showed him the patches I’d earned the five years I marched…two for semifinalist and three for top 12 finalist…did he wish to see my medals too? I started to go back to my room for the medals, and he just patted the couch and asked me to sit next to him. He reopened a scrapbook and pointed to a picture of me rehearsing…”So that’s really you at a drum corps rehearsal?” Duh, didn’t I show him that picture about a half hour ago? “Thanks for showing me your jacket…I just had to be sure you were for real!!!” He leaned over and took my chin in his hands and kissed me!!! I’d never felt this before, but my toes curled!!!! I couldn’t stop smiling!!!! I looked at him and he was smiling ear to ear too!!!! “I can’t believe we found each other!!!” he said. Yeah, he was right…for the first time in my life, I felt complete…by just a kiss. I’d never felt anything like it before.

*sigh* Perspective tends to grant one wisdom. One cannot see the big picture until they have stepped away from it far enough. Initially Donna and I had been amazed at the speed that our relationship went. It had been a lifetime crammed into half a decade. Looking back, I realized that God knew that Donna didn't have a lot of time left on Earth and decided, for us, that all the relationship red tape that most people deal with would be cut for us. I am so damn grateful for the time I had with Donna. Reading through these journal entries of hers allows me to remind myself what a wonderful woman Donna was and how incredibly damn lucky I was to have been a part of her life. Good night my bright shining star.




PART THE FIRST
This all starts back in 1997, a few months after my son was born. I had been fortunate to fall in love with and marry a wonderful woman. She was the love of my life and my soulmate. We had made such wonderful plans together. I look back at a video that had been made in October of that year when my sister-in-law Cheryl and her husband Tom came from Arizona to visit. When I see that video, the future seems to be boundless for the young family on it. They looked so wonderfully happy, the kind of happy that most people never can find.

Donna had been complaining about discomfort when she had dairy products. Everyone around us chalked it up to a possible allergy stemming from having Zach (my mom is deadly allergic to pork products and my mother-in-law is deadly allergic to mushrooms - both resulting from pregnancies). I grew concerned because as time went by, the allergy grew worse and worse. It got to the point where if there was even a slight amount of any kind of dairy, it would make her sick. I finally made her go to the doctor. After talking to Donna, the doctor sent her to a specialist. The specialist wanted to do a colonoscopy to see what the problem was. He was thinking that the problem was Crohn's disease or Colitus. We did our fair share of research and realized that our lives would change. But to allow Donna to be healthy, any sacrifice would be worth it. We went up to Dallas that Christmas with a lot of hope that all would be well when we returned in January.

It is almost a month later that I find myself waiting for Donna to return from the colonoscopy. I look up at the television. Then President Clinton has come down to the Rio Grande Valley and my band, the Weslaco Panther Corps, is playing for President Clinton. I was very fortunate to have a boss that was very understanding about these things and me being at my wife's side was no problem. I'm sitting in my Friday outfit of staff shirt and blue jeans (Donna guessing that after she recovers from the colonoscopy, that she would kick my butt back to work in the afternoon). A nurse walks into the room and asks me to accompany her. Hmmmm, this is a bit different than what they had said would happen.

I am led to the recovery area. Individual patients are accorded some privacy by curtained partitions. I am brought to where Donna is, which is near the exit door. The nurse leaves telling me that the doctor will soon be here. Donna is a bit groggy but still exhibits her sense of humor by telling me she felt like she was being inflated for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We anxiously await the doctor.

He parts the curtain and walks in. There is a very serious look on his face. Both Donna and I think that he discovered Crohn's disease and that it would require a lot of work for Donna to feel more normal. But it's what comes out of his mouth that is so shocking. He doesn't say “There's something there I'm concerned about.” or “There is some growth we have discovered.” He says flat-out...

“I discovered cancer in Donna's colon.”

We both suddenly reel with the shock of his statement. Our brains sit there processing what we have heard. My stomach sinks at the reality at what has been said. I look over at Donna. Mentally, she has retreated to a far place in her mind at the realization that her own body has betrayed her.

The doctor tells us the plain facts. Donna will have to have surgery to remove the tumor. He shows us pictures from the colonoscopy. We see a egg-sized object nestled against the walls of her colon. The doctor says that we can schedule the surgery for later in the month. He also says that we could do the surgery now. Donna is already prepped and the doctor says that the surgeon is availible.

I call everyone I can think of. The next ten hours are a blur. My mother-in-law gets on a plane that very day. I remember the dead silence from my boss when I tell him the news. I also remember telling Donna that we would get through this together and that I would walk up to the Gates of Hell for her. I also remember Donna giving me one of the biggest hugs ever as a result. *sigh* I also can remember the slight dread I felt as they wheeled Donna off to the operating theater. I realized that our lives were changing in a way we did not want. The only concrete thing I can remember was Julie and I sitting in the waiting room dealing with our own individual worries about Donna and just needing the security of having someone there who was going through the same thing.

The next day, my wife is totally drugged up. She was in for well over 9 hours of major surgery. They took out the tumor as well as a 8 inch section of her large intestine. The good news is that Donna made it through the surgery without a hitch and should recover well. When she awoke, her oncologist comes in to talk to us about the next step. He is a very experienced and very compassionate man. He tells us that the tumor Donna had was of a aggressive strain that they had never seen before. He is thinking that the cancer may have started growing within a few short months. They term what Donna had as a stage 4 tumor, meaning that there was a chance that the tumor had a chance to spread. So the option is chemotherapy.

One of the first things that Donna asked is about birth defects. The onocologist sadly tells us with what Donna will go through, that there is a possible chance of difficulties with conceiving and bring to full-term a baby, much less a healthy one. So we make the first of many sacrifices to the dark god that is Cancer.

We had planned to have three kids. Somewhere in my house there is a notebook that tells all about the three children we were going to have. It was never a question of if we would have more children but when. The first one came to pass and so far, Zachary Daniel exceeds everything we had hoped for. So in a way, the decision not to have anymore children was like losing two children. We mourned for them as if we had lost them on earth. I like to think now that up in Heaven that Donna is with the two children that we could never have.

So begins six long months. Six months of intermitant hospital stays, of cleaning the gaping holes from her surgery, of watching my wife go through chemotherapy. On a regular basis, we would drive the half-hour to McAllen to the South Texas Cancer Center and she would go through a chemotherapy regimin. And then she would become sick and weak for days. She would do good to have the energy to move from the bedroom to the living room of our small condo.

At this point, Donna had used up all her sick leave. She was about to get to the point where the school district we worked for would start docking her for full days. Now in many school districts, when someone becomes sick like Donna was, a sick leave pool is created. Employees of the district donated some of their sick leave to help out the person who is sick. A teacher that Donna had taught with in Kansas had used this to much success.

It was like hitting a brick wall over and over and over again. We were told "no" over and over again, even though there were hundreds of teachers and administrators that wanted to give Donna their sick leave (including me - I had over 30 days accumulated). I finally confronted the district superintendent on this. I was told there was no policy in place because people might abuse the policy - grrrrrrrrr. In spite of fighting against this and in spite of the support of people at the Administration building, Donna's request was denied. Suddenly we went from a two income family that was at the point of doing well finacially to a one income family that was struggling.

(post-script on this topic - Last year, the other directors were trying to keep this flyer away from me. I lost it when I read it. The district was doing a sick leave pool for a custodian. FUCK FUCK FUCK. Even now, I want to punch my fist through the goddamn office window. I'm not angry at the custodian. I'm angry at the fucking district. My district used my wife until she was useless to them and cast her aside...more on this soon)

Another sacrifice was made soon after. It had always been my dream to get my own tuba. However, tubas are what one would not call cheap. I had been saving up money in the hopes of one day getting my horn. However, the few thousand I had saved up went into keeping my family afloat. One strange thing along this subject was that there always seemed to be a bit more money than I thought we had. A few months after Donna's passing, I realized that Donna had been quietly saving up money to buy me a tuba and that she had been doing this since we were married. She was quietly taking that money and adding it to our account to help us stay afloat. I got a lot of this from my mother-in-law. Margaret sat down and told me as much and said "Donna wanted you to have a tuba, now go get it." And I did purchase one, a beautiful silver one. And everytime I play on it in symphony, I think of Donna and how much she loved to watch me play in VSO performances. I honestly think that those were moments that she would fall in love with me more.

Well, Donna went through six months of experimental chemotherapy. We struggled but survived, thanks to the help of many wonderful people. Another sad effect was that some people that we had considered as really good friends weirded out on us. They acted as if cancer was a contagious disease. There were even a number of people that Donna had know for well over ten years that just ran away. I can only pity that they could not find the maturity to deal with Donna's cancer. I understand that this is a survival mechanism for some people, yet I think there are better ways to dealing with this than putting your head in the sand.

For a short time, we felt things were getting better. We had begun Donna's cancer free countdown. Everytime she would go for a checkup, she would literally dance down the hall. We felt for a while that we could breath.

Donna would go to Houston every couple of months for a health inspection at M.D.Anderson Cancer Center. In April, she had a appointment to check on things. She decided that there was no reason for both of us to go. So I agree to stay while she went to her appointment.

Long story short, the radiologist in Weslaco couldn't read the fucking X-Rays correctly. To this day, I firmly believe that although there is no strong evidence (and what strong evidence there was was destroyed - I know how it goes in the Valley) now, I blame the idiot who screwed up. If he had read the charts right, things could have been caught in time. All I know is that there is a special place in hell for people like this and its right next to the Cancer that afflicted Donna.

I was home checking on things between classes. I got a phone call from Donna. They had found a cancerous tumor in her liver...fuck...oh fuck. For one of the few times through this, I emotionally lose it. I feel like a total failure that Donna is in Houston dealing with this alone and I can't be there. It literally felt like I was being physically beaten. Fortunately, my pastor was able to find me. I am very thankful for Jon. He's a great person and he helped Donna and I in ways that were above and beyond what most people would do.

My wife had a liver resectioning at the beginning of July, 1999. While most people were celebrating the 4th of July, I was pondering if my wife would survived the 10+ hour surgery that took out almost 70% of her liver. My mother-in-law also picked a extremely wrong time to start a argument with me. I am not going to go into details on this, but she did learned that I am not the kind of person who is going to lie down and take crap from anyone. Both Margaret and I realized that the stress of the whole thing was getting to us and that was the last thing that Donna needed. Fortunately, we were able to solve the problem before it affected Donna.

The good news was that Donna did survive the surgery and yes, her liver did regenerate back to full side. Although the future was at best uncertain, Donna and I felt that we had earned some more breathing room.




PART THE SECOND
So Donna was able to get through her liver resectioning, done by the finest liver surgeon in the world. Unfortately, there were some bad side effects from the surgery. She spent many weeks in the hospital trying to recovery from the surgery and from infection. It was at this time that I realized that sleep was becoming a unknown commodity for me. Between taking care of Donna, Zach, the house, bills, and work, rest was gradually becoming a unknown concept.

Donna tried for a short time to go back to work, but that did not last very long. The residual effects of the chemotherapy along with the residual effects from the various surgeries had taken their toll physically. So we decided that we would allow her the time to rest and recooperate, finances be damned. Although she was frequently tired and still had to take various medicines, we both felt that she could recover.

Donna found out that she could withdraw money from her life insurance because she had a "terminal illness" (of course in her mind, terminal was terminal when they threw the dirt on your coffin). There were two things she wanted to do. First, she wanted to take Zach to Disneyworld while she was still physically able to. Second, she wanted us to live in a house, a real house, while she was still alive to enjoy it.

That December, I saw flashes of the old Donna. She seemed to have a lot more energy. She was actually managing some of her own care and was letting me get some rest. She was taking care of Zach the way that she had been wanting to for over a year. We honestly thought that maybe the worst was past and that we could move on. We timidly made future plans of what we would do once the five year mark came and went (that is when you are considered cancer-free). We had a huge christmas and started making plans to look for a new house. Our New Year's Eve was spend waiting for the Y2K disaster to come by. We sat at home, ate good food, and watched the panic turn into "D'OH!" when people realized that Cyber-Ragnarok would not occur. I remember how really good Donna looked at that time. She said it was the best she had felt in two years. Even her surgical scars seem to be healing well.

And so we took Zach to Disneyworld for a week. We had made plans to have one of Donna's dearest friends and his wife to help us out. We were thinking that Donna would have to rely upon a wheelchair and everything.

...well Donna fooled us all...lol lol lol

It was funny. It was almost as if God said "You know what kids? You guys have gone through a lot of shit the last few years so I'm giving you a week to be a normal family."

She ran everyone ragged - lol

We covered EPCOT, The Magic Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Cirque du Solei. I think we saw every single Disney character possible (Zach was vaguely disturbed by the Seven Dwarfs). We stayed at the Contemparary Resort. For Donna, myself, and Zach - it was one of the happiest moments that we had as our little family.




More later. It takes a lot to put this down and I need some air. The good news is that I feel much better and it feels like a load of weight has been lifted.