My grandmother is a fighter. She may not have been there during the wars, helping make airplanes and she may not have saved people in deadly fires, she may not have run for office or even done more than just do her best as a divorcee raising two daughters more or less on her own, but she's a fighter, through and through. Something that's been a sort of family trait. Whenever one of the females of our family, be it my sister, my mother, my aunt or me has been particularly fiery, particularly stubborn and hell-bent, it has often been said, 'Alright, Bonnie.'
She's that too. She's beautiful. It isn't the beauty of youth, although she was very pretty when she was younger. Some may say she looks just like other grandmothers, with her hair now streaked a dark grey with bits of silver, the brown gold of her hair just a memory but still a vivid one with wild streaks of that also. Her face may be one lined with her age but it isn't lined in complete sadness. It shows her mischievousness still, it shows her spirit, although the pain and suffering linger there too in a way that cannot be erased.
And she wouldn't erase a single line. She's earned them all. Every freckle from forgotten summers where she tanned the color of copper, every crease and fold of her skin, she's earned. She used to work in a factory while my mother and aunt were growing up. They used to live in the same house that she still lives in, I sleep in their old room. That house was built new for her, with the built in bookcase next to the kitchen and everything. Sure, some of the appliances don't match the other but she loves her house. Loves that street. Loves that life, even in the later years of her life.
Now a new foe enters the field. We aren't completely unfamiliar with it. She's already battled and beaten skin cancer. She's already battled and beaten breast cancer. And she's decided she'll do whatever it takes to battle and beat this new form of cancer, lung cancer.
They aren't a hundred percent sure if it is lung cancer or just a manifestation of the breast cancer but for now they're treating it as lung cancer. If she had decided not to fight, she would have only six months to live. Long enough to see my sister marry. Long enough to see me head off to college. But not long enough for her first great-grandchild or for my diploma. Not long enough for so much that she's earned to live to see.
So I'm fragile right now. So very fragile because that's my grams. That's my hard headed, stubborn as a mule, kick em where it hurts and keep on moving grams and she's fighting a battle she's already fucking won twice. She shouldn't have to fight this hard again. Its so fucking unfair.
If anyone wonders, yes I'm in tears. Because I fought that woman, using the stubbornness and the fiery temperament that I inherited to tell her that she can't quit, that she had to beat the breast cancer. And I'm not about to let her quit now but I am so fragile right now. I need all the support I can get. And I never ask for help lightly.
And if that isn't enough, I have surgery in less than a week.
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