From The Heart

It is with happiness that I see the memoir about my son, Alex, available for readers on Amazon.com. Writing Tumor Me – The Story of My Firefighter truly was a labor of love and helped me work through a great deal of grief during the past months. That’s been a good thing. Now that the memoir is in print, I can relax a bit, and I must say, imitating words from an old Southern movie, “I feel like I done birthed a baby!”

Throughout this project I reviewed mountains of medical records, perused albums of photographs, and recalled many extremes in good and bad: myriad doctors, laborious waits in lab after lab after lab, countless MRIs, agonizing delays, and unsettling, hospital stays. As I wrote, I envisioned again the roads my son and I traveled, the weather that often held hands with out emotions, our long conversations, the jokes, the impersonations, the seizures, and more. Many serious moments played with our feelings, and we met with uncertainty time and again. We entered new offices, met dozens of doctors, and were bombarded with information that was staggering and scary. I understand now the stages of grief as never before and that reaching acceptance may take a long time for some folks. That’s okay. All of us travel our own paths. What I discovered most through writing about my son’s nine-year struggle with brain cancer was that trust and family are fragile, that one has no control, that judgments of others (and this can be hard!) are fruitless, and that we should never give up on the people we love. Never.

Writing the memoir also allowed me to remember the gracious love and support of my husband, my friends, former students, and the CAL FIRE family. I am forever grateful.