What You Don’t See

From time to time I will click on a link of someone’s site I used to read to find it in much the same shape as mine – left on a cyber shelf until that day she may or may not pick it up again.  I can’t help but wonder what caused the pause.  Was it lack of interest?  Too much life and not enough time to chronicle it?  In one instance it was a blog turned memorial by a family who wanted their mom’s words to remain because she had been taken by an unimaginable tragedy.  You just never really know what’s happening on the other side of that screen.

The McKay House has experienced much in 2013.  Much of our dailiness is a blur and non-descript.   But then there are those days that you will never forget the place you were sitting and the numb that washed over you in a bath of one million tears when it all changed with a phone call.  That one word that won’t stop reverberating in your head:  Cancer.  You will never forget having to go to the store when it’s the last place in the world you want to be and trying to hold it together with (cancer, CANCER) just below the surface of the pleasantries you exchange with the woman shopping alongside you for green beans.  Is she trying to hold it together, too, or does she really mean it when she says she’s fine?

Some of you (those who remain in spite of my lackluster blogging) are my Facebook and Twitter friends and are therefore aware that my 17 year-old niece, Shelby, was diagnosed with Stage 3 Lymphoma in October. In a blur that would rival any deep space time warp, she and my sister, Nikki, have been whisked away to St. Jude’s in Memphis, TN where gratefully we have received a good prognosis.   She is currently in her third round of treatment and by faith we believe her healing will come and she’ll return home good as new.

In the meantime my 12-year old nephew, Jake (Shelby’s little brother), has come to live with us since Shelby’s particular treatment plan requires her to be in Memphis 3 weeks of every month.  Jake is a bonafide McKay at least until the end of the school year.  Unless he’s telling a big fat lie, he says he is happy with his Favorite Aunt.  Truly, I think he only loves me for my wi-fi.  Tori (Shelby’s 16 yr old sis) has moved in with my other sister Christi. (There are lots of us, and we have lots of babies.) Divide and conquer, say we.  And a good time was had by all.

So yes, on your side of the screen it has been silent but I promise you there is plenty of noise on my end.  More than ever I feel the need to write again if for no other reason than to get out of my own head.  In no way am I trying to come across as depressed and dark.  I can honestly say our family is hopeful and 2014 is full of promise for many very bright days.

So if you ask how I’m doing, and I say ‘fine’, I mean it.  For now.

I hope you are fine, too.

The Cousins, Christmas 2013.