I'm so thankful our family comes from hearty stock. I still have vivid memories of the night Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, the moment 29 years ago today that she came out of her anesthesia after her mastectomy, sitting with her as she got her chemo, watching her take off her wig and remove her prosthetic breast after her chemo so she could get the sleep she needed to keep up the fight. But more importantly, I remember how she wouldn't let breast cancer control her life. I have even fonder memories of her traveling to DC -- one of her favorite cities -- with us, and of her smiling in all our pictures with the slight orange tint of a chemo patient. Of her volunteering for Reach to Recovery, a program that paired breast cancer survivors with new breast cancer patients to answer questions and act as survivor role models and give hope where often there is none. And most importantly, I remember how we all chose to laugh instead of cry over the entire situation. It turns out that a prosthetic breast can be very funny, especially when it's used as a giant nose on a drawing of a face, when it makes uncontrollable farting sounds against sweaty skin on a hot day, and most especially -- and this is one of our family's favorite stories -- when it's put away for the night on a stack of hotel towels, only to fly across the room and SPLAT! against the far wall when the top towel is unknowingly pulled off the pile in semi-darkness.
We're lucky as a family to have all of this -- and while we celebrate that my mom is still with us, we will always mourn the loss of the people who aren't.
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