Dear Grandma,
I’ll be honest. I’m heartbroken. I could lie to you and tell you I’m okay, but I’m not, and I’ve been crying since you told me the news. It doesn’t seem real. You were doing so well, and then in the blink of an eye, everything changed.
You were walking again and your cancer was responding well to the treatment just a few weeks earlier; you even told me, triumphantly, on the phone that you thought you were going to be walking without any assistance by June.
Then, suddenly, on Thursday, you called to tell me that I probably should take off work on Friday because your doctor had some bad news to share with the family. He would tell us what we all had feared — the cancer is no longer responding to the treatment and there are no other good alternatives. Your disease is now terminal and you only have, at most, a little less than a year to live.
Now, I’m writing this letter as my Mother’s Day tribute to you, so everyone can know how much you mean to me and how great of a person you are, and honestly, I don’t even know where to start because you’ve done so much for your children, me, and many other people.
First, I want you to know that, even though we’ve been told it’s not curable anymore, I still believe in you. You’re tough as hell, and you’re like a real life super hero to me, and if anyone can beat something like this, it’s you. Like your nurses said, you’re Super Carol. Last year you fought cancer while taking care of your terminally-ill husband, who also had cancer, and while grieving over your daughter who had died of cancer a month before. You’re nothing short of an inspiration.
I also want to thank you for raising my brother and me and being there for us when we were sick. Thank you for making sure we got our asthma treatment every night and making sure we were breathing in our sleep. Thank you for making sure we were well nourished and loved. Thank you for caring about our grades and what we did at school. Thank you for all the awesome birthday and Christmas presents; some might say you spoiled us, but that’s what a grandma is supposed to do, right? Anyway, In short, thank you for being a mom and a grandma.
If the doctors are right, then I’m sorry you’ll never get to see me get married. I’m sorry your great grand children will never get to meet you, and you’ll never be able to see me raise them. Lastly, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to save you from this. I just hope you’re proud of me, because that means everything to me.
In the end, even if they are right, I want you to know that I love you very much, and I’m extremely proud of you. My children may never get to see you, but at least, one day, I’ll still get to tell them the story of how my grandma was a real life super hero.
Love,
Travis
