Memo: At Large

Dear Jean:

I'm writing in response to an e-mail I received from your husband, William. He says you're a regular reader of this column who "thinks the world" of me.

William's cooked up a surprise for you, Jean. He's asking your friends to send a card or a note to congratulate you on an important milestone: This month makes five years you've been breast-cancer free. He asked if I'd be one of the people to send good wishes.

Jean, I have a confession to make. The first thing I felt when I received William's request was a tiny pinprick of resentment. There is, you see, a certain symmetry here: Your fifth anniversary as a survivor of breast cancer is my mother's 13th anniversary as one of its casualties. Whenever I meet someone who has beaten the disease, my joy for them is tempered by a little voice shouting up at God from the sub-basement of my being. "What about Mom?" it demands. "How come this lady gets to live, but Mom didn't? What's wrong with you, God?"

Small of me, I know.

But I had a heck of a mom, Jean. Brought up four kids in the meanest neighborhoods in L.A. and never lost a one. Having her in your corner was like having the Marines. She was all the love in the world and I grew up thinking no triumph complete, no good news fully celebrated, until I had shared it with her.

Cancer took her life before it killed her. It shrank her and shriveled her, made her too weak to walk unaided. In the end, it confined her to a bed in my sister's house where she lay for hours on end, drifting in and out of consciousness while I sat nearby, praying for miracles that were not forthcoming.

It was difficult, letting hope go. I remember, she caught me staring at her this one time and I must have looked sad, because she winked at me. Can you believe that? She could no longer speak, but she gave me this wink as if to tell me that she was all right. As if to let me know that she loved me. As if to say goodbye.

That was the last thing she ever "said" to me, Jean. She passed two days after. And even now, 13 years later, not too many days go by without me thinking of her, wondering what she'd say in a certain situation. Missing her.

So you see, there's symmetry between us, Jean. I guess that's why William's note hit me in a tender spot. Anyway, I called your husband and he told me about you. About the shock and disbelief when the doctors said they would need to biopsy your breast. About how your mother died of a rare disease when you were just a girl. About your fear of leaving your teenage sons as your mom had left you.

He told me about the mastectomy, too. How he brought his guitar to play for you as you were being prepped. How some days, you drove to the mountains to walk in the woods, maybe hollering at God from a sub-basement of your own. He told me how the two of you left a crowded city, moved to Maine and bought a farm. He says you hope to make it a place to which people with life-threatening illnesses can come and just take . . .time.

There was something in his voice as he spoke and it made me ask a question to which I already knew the answer. "You really love her, don't you?"

"She's changed my life,'" he said.

In the end, of course, love is the binding tie. A husband's wife, a son's mother, a brother's sister, a father's daughter, all threatened by this cancer, this killer and thief. And I still pray for miracles.

So, Jean, God bless you. Please accept my heartiest congratulations. And my thanks. Because meeting you, albeit through William, has convinced me that maybe it's time to quit hollering at God. Time to embrace the symmetry.

April becomes a month to remember love that was lost. And celebrate love that remains.

Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column runs in The Miami Herald's Living & Arts section every Thursday and Saturday.

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