To My Spiritual Wanderer

To My Spiritual Wanderer;

We have this special connection you and I. For the past 24 years, you've always been my favorite (but shhh.) I think it's because I see a lot of me in you. That, and the fact that we are both the last born and terribly picked on by our older siblings. I also think it has a lot to do with the fact that you let me be your flower girl at your wedding and I was so honored that I got to sit in the front pews while everyone else had to sit behind me.

I remember the first time I heard you say a bad word. It was Christmas time at Grandma's condo and we were finished playing "Bing-Bing and a Bong-Bong." (Hmmm... in retrospect I totally get the drug reference to this game and it makes sense that you all used to play it in the 70's.) You were telling a story about something and you used the word Damn. I felt my heart break and it wasn't until I heard Grandma say it one time on a trip up to Tobermory that I realized it's just a thing that adults say.

And of course, we have our "lights." Some powerful, unexplained, supernatural force that surrounds us wherever we go. Today it happened in the Target frozen food isle, and last week it happened in the parking structure of the IKEA.

Sometimes I wonder if we had gone to that psychic back in December, if she would have seen the cancer? And then other times I struggle to even begin to believe in psychic abilities. I guess when you want something bad enough, you're willing to try anything or believe anything to get whatever it is, or at least try to understand it.

I told my mother that I feel like this is all just one big joke. This is you going undercover in a cancer ward as research for your new book. Primary research, get in where the "real" people are. What stage of grieving is the denial part? Because I think I'm at that one. You're URod, this isn't supposed to happen to YOU. But I guess it is, and the sooner I can wrap my naive little brain around it, the better.

Sending you love. Lots and lots of lick leukemia love. And judging by the prayer wall you've got going on there on facebook, God is going to be pretty sick of hearing your name and thus make you all better real quick to get your butt out of the hospital.

Still praying for the Tigers too.

Love,
KC