perspective after paris

It's been a rough week.  Paris and treatment and all.

It seems like some rounds of chemo are tougher than others and this one has been a doozy.  Still Andy presses on through it all, determined and steadfast, and truthfully pretty out of it, due to all the anti-nausea medicine.

I sit beside him and worry and take meticulous notes, and keep close tabs on the nurses (who don't need it) and peck away at work tasks and worry some more.  About Andy and this world our children are inheriting.

The girls ride the wake of being left for three days without us.  They are in such loving hands with friends and family and plenty to keep them occupied, but they are wearing thin.  They don't know about Paris.

I write this not to make you worry.  I write this because it's our reality right now.  I've probably even made it look a little prettier than it is.  But I don't want you to worry.  Not about us.

What I came here to write was, instead, about kindness.  Kindness that is shown in so many ways every day.  Kindness that comes to us because of cancer, but also not.  Kindness because you are our family, our friends, our co-workers, our postmaster, our grocer, our nurses, our neighbor, our hairdresser, maybe you are even just a friend of a friend, but you are our community.  Kindness because this is what we do for each other.  Because this is what is good in the world.

There is evidence of kindness all over the internet, all over the world, for Paris, for Muslims, for our human-ness.

So many hearts are aching, on every corner of this globe.  Ours are just some.

Thank you for your kindness, your selflessness, your giving in the face of fear.  Thanks for remembering we are all human and adding your strength to the greater good.  Thanks for being there for us too.