I’m all about the love.

We talked a few weeks ago about songs that keep popping up, time and again. For me, right now, it’s Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”. Seems like every time I turn around right now, I hear it, and it makes me happy and sad at the same time.

It makes me think about the people I devote my life to, and who’ve devoted theirs to me. How concrete our bonds seem, but how fleeting all bonds truly are. I’ve had a great run here, 12 years of having beautiful children, marrying the man I love, and nothing truly shaking the world we’ve created.

I know how it feels to have your world shaken, and I know how the quakes come in huge trembling surges. It’s never just one. Last time, it was the triple whammy:death of my best friend, followed by the stillbirth of my first child, and the loss of my VW-driving Grandpop within a year of each other. Then, I dug myself out from under the rubble, and I built this new life. I foolishly told myself that this new one was better, quake proof. But it never is, is it?

This isn’t meant to be a “Wah feel sorry for me tell me it’ll be OK post”, although I realize it sounds like that. I’m just looking down the barrel of three of our four parents having some serious health stuff going on right now, and I’m scared. I’m so grateful to have these people in my life, to be geographically and emotionally close to them. I know that none of us are ready for it to end, our status quo, and I hope it’s not. My mom, when she was getting diagnosed with her breast cancer, turned to me and said wistfully, “I’m just not ready for life to be ugly.”

But that’s what’s hitting me this week. Sometimes, life gets very ugly. And scary. And hard. And all that I can do in the midst of it is commit myself to these people, over and over again, and witness their beauty. And, of course, Google stuff. My new nickname is GQ, for Google Queen. Cause sometimes? People shouldn’t Google their own cancer. A filter is needed. I’ve also been amazed and gratified by the doctors that email me back, responding to my 2 am S.O.S’s with really helpful information, for people who are not their patients. Because they care. And it has made a difference.

So I witness my darling mother in law making cookies for her grand daughter on Saturday, knowing that her staging surgery is tomorrow and that we’re all scared of what changes that knowledge may bring. Witness my mom smiling at her doctor telling her she has to go back in for just a little more cutting, as she tells him, “As long as I can snorkel on my cruise in November.”

Watching these two fight their battles, but continue to live their lives on their terms, has been deeply inspiring. I know we’ll be all right, whatever happens. Cancer sucks, but it sure cuts away the mother daughter bullshit. I don’t think either one of them could irritate me right now if they tried. When I see them now I hug them a little tighter before I take our babies home. (Cause you KNOW they’re not just my babies.:)

And in my head, I think, “I’m yours.”