Nana...

My nana turns 77 a week from Friday. She sent me a postcard last week to ask if I'd make up her favorite olives -- big green ones with garlic cream cheese stuffed in the hole -- but upon talking with her yesterday she recanted...

The chemo's making her too sick to eat much of anything. :(

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Nana was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in February -- the day after James' first birthday, actually. She's been on an agressive chemo treatment since March: three days on, 11 off until at least Christmas. We've been told that with chemo she stands an excellent chance of beating cancer... but the chemo itself has obviously been a horrible process.

We visited Nana yesterday for the first time in three weeks. JJames had been vaxxed in mid May and the Dr. recommended staying away from anyone whose immune system had been compromised till the vaccines worked their way through. Anyway, it's only been three weeks, but Nana looks so much older now. :(

At one point she sent me upstairs to get a shopping bag of donated children's books she'd been gathering for James and it hit me pretty hard that I had become something more akin to a visitor lately -- I stay in the public spaces of my Nana's home when I visit, and rarely ever make it upstairs to the bedrooms, office or old art room.

It hurt my heart a bit -- to realize time is marching forward and there's nothing I can do about it. I touched the new wallpaper in what used to be my Grammy's room -- the old light blue flocked wallpaper has been replaced by something more contempory-country-casual. I picked up a picture of my nana at 55 or 60... when she was still sporting a red tint to her white hair. I creaked down the hall to peek into my Papa's office... still familiar with the built in double beds and the pine beadboard panneling. I used to invite friends to sleep overs on those two twin beds.

*sigh*

I just love that house, I love its occupants... and I just really don't want to be a visitor any more.