Pancreatic Cancer

So, last Thursday,... less than a week ago, Aunt Pooh learned she has Pancreatic Cancer. She has a large (6cm spot) on her pancreas but it has spread also to her liver, lymph nodes along her aorta, femur, hip, and spine. :-( She has been given three months live... maybe longer with chemo.

Now, if you are reading this... then you probably know me... and if you probably know me... then you probably know how head over heels in love with my aunt I have ALWAYS been. This is the Aunt that bought my the coach diaper bag I showed you in a previous post. ;-)

She has always been the absolute best to me. I grew up with a single workaholic mother and often times felt very much alone. I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, but its definitely true. My aunt always had a way of making me feel special. She would spoil me rotten on a pretty regular basis. I remember when I was 8, I flew out to Nevada by myself for the first time to visit her. I was soooooooo in love with her, I demanded that she take me to get a haircut so that I could look just like her. I remembered just thinking that she is what I wanted to be like. Now, Aunt Pooh did have a SHORT haircut and my grandfather called me Steve when I got back, for it seemed like forever... :-)

When my grandfather passed away a few years later, I was devastated. He was my entire world. I remember feeling like no one would ever love me like he loved me. I was heart broken and devastated. Aunt Pooh was the person that stepped into my life even more to fill that void. It was during her trip home for the funeral that she taught me the expression "Just charge it." :)

In the years that followed my brother and I would visit her yearly. After a while, it was just me visiting her but I loved that even more because I got her all to myself. We could do girly things and watch girly movies and talk about SHOES! We both share an extreme passion for shoes and purses... and most recently we have bonded over decorating.

A few years ago I lost another extremely important person in my life, my grandmother. She had been sick for a little while, but not too long. I took for granted that she would get better because I was naive to her age and illness. But again, I had Aunt Pooh there to curl up in bed and cry for the loss of a woman that raised both me and her.

Everyone asks me how I am feeling these days... mostly sad, but kind of angry. I'm not going to have her with me during this difficult time, like she was with my grandparents. I'm not going to have her for Christmas or Thanksgiving... I have always wanted to have this family that I see my friends have. I have wanted a family that makes time for each other during the holidays and travels to see you or even just makes sure they call. I have,since turning into an adult (recently), tried to reach out to people and invite them to our house, but I haven't had much luck. It always hurts my feelings, but in the end I was grateful that I had Aunt Pooh. She always made sure to try to spend every holiday that she could with me. If I invited her and she COULD make it, she did. Heck! She even came for my housewarming party!

Really, I feel so sad for my child... he deserves someone that will make time for him.... that will inconvenience their life to make his happier. His loss is what I find myself crying for daily. I have said all of this to Aunt Pooh and her response is just that Ross and I will need to be the ones to shower him with love and affection.

The most difficult part of ALL of this is that the person I would normally talk to about what I'm feeling and thinking would be her and because I don't want to upset her or she get upset by something I say, I don't have anyone to talk to about this. I know I have Ross, but being that he is a guy, he isn't very insightful and most of the time I can tell he is uncomfortable with this. I also know I have 100 friends that have offered their ears, but I just can't bring myself to tell them everything that I am thinking. Plus, I can't help but think they will get sick of hearing me talk about this for the next however many months. My stepmother has been wonderful though. Her mom just went through a lot of what Aunt Pooh is going through and passed away in November, so its nice to hear advice from her and she calls regularly so I know she cares not only about me, but about my aunt which makes me feel good.

Anyways... I wanted to see if writing this down would help me feel better... I guess we'll see.