A little background

I've had a series of crises in my life since approximately late 2003 when I was told (under rather dubious circumstances) that my brother was ill. Really ill. I discovered he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He was the oldest of the four of us, which included two elder sisters. God rest his soul, he was a lifetime smoker and I guess it had finally taken its toll on him. But don't be fooled by that news. I have known other people who never smoked and succumbed to lung cancer. The news about my brother was essentially the beginning of my "crisis" state. During that time, a maternal cousin of mine had lost her battle with a brain tumor. I spent many summers down south with this cousin in my teen years and to say this affected me greatly is an understatement.

Just months after that, and during the "digestion" of the news about my brother, I received another phone call. My maternal aunt, Mom's only remaining sibling, had died of congestive heart failure. Wow. Since we were separated by many states, I wasn't privy to all the details. So picture this. The situation is such now that three family members were at my doorstep delivering tragic news. Mind you, my mother, by this time in her 80s, was dealing with health issues of her own. Concurrently, I had been an active student at community college studying and preparing for my Associate in Applied Science degree in Graphic Design. The stress level had really mounted. Being in the "meat" of my discipline by now, I wound up having to extend some courses through the summer, but graduated in May of 2004, with Honors, just days after my brother's service. Life was certainly beginning to show me a series of emotional situations, bad tempered with good. Ken and I decided that advancing to university-level studies would be a positive thing for me. I was accepted to William Paterson University, and in the fall of 2004 started my studies.

Mom had been receiving excellent home care for 11 months when the money ran out. In early 2005, faced with another difficult decision, she had to be put in a nursing home. She subsequently passed on in the summer less than a week before my finals. During her stay there, necessity dictated that Ken and I also look to purchase a house. If you're thinking that it's going to calm down for me soon, think again. We settled on a house and closed about 10 days after my mother's funeral. Even though this may sound like a soap opera, this is all real and true! Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Several months pass and we're now into the summer of 2006. This time, I get news that an aunt on my father's side was diagnosed with another form of cancer. She was the last surviving blood member of that generation. It wasn't long before I was at her wake, as well. Literally just weeks after her passing, my sister Margaret announced she had breast cancer. None of us will ever know when she discovered the problem. She called her daughters/my nieces from the hospital the morning of the day she decided she couldn't control the bleeding and needed special attention to tell them. SUPER HUGE WOW. For all of us! Margaret may have literally been my sister, but she was figuratively my mother. From as far back as I can remember, we always shared a special closeness. Hence, this occasion was monumentally devastating to me. The minor aspects of this event were what caused me to, once again, extend four university-level classes into another semester, and adding on four additional classes. I wound up having to take an eight-class semester the Spring of 2007. All things considered, it was nothing short of atrocious.