August Rambling

Ramble time.

August is a horrible month for me.  We started off August 2008 with high hopes.  Keeghan, our 12-year-old son, was starting a new drug trial for the treatment of his relapsed brain tumor.  We knew we were grasping at straws, but still . . . the hope was there.

By mid-August he was on hospice care.  On August 31st he died.

I hate August.  August is a month of extreme anger for me.

After Keeghan’s death, I got involved in a few different fundraisers for childhood cancer research.  In the first three years after he died, I was very involved.  Through all of this involvement, I met many other parents of children with cancer, and through Facebook have stayed in touch with some of them.  They keep me “in the know” on what is going on in the childhood cancer world, whether I care to know or not.  

It’s been five years now though and my fire for fundraising, for getting out there and waving my flag is just . . . extinguished.  I need a break from everyone.  I don’t feel social this month.  I need a break for so many reasons, some of which are not things I think most people would understand or want to hear.  

So to save my 217 friends on Facebook from my anger, I decided to deactivate my account for the month of August.  I even made an announcement at the end of July to let them all know what I was doing.  Apparently that wasn’t enough though, because people just had to know what I was doing.

After finding out from a friend that people were worried, I reactivated my account to let everyone know what the deal was.  And immediately I was inundated with everything I was trying to avoid this month.  People who, frankly, just piss me off.

The people whose greatest challenge in life is dealing with traffic to get to work every day.

The mother with healthy children who can do nothing but whine about her lot in life.

The mother whose child died and who now uses Facebook as her own big pity party, posting pictures of her child constantly so that people will continue to tell her how sorry they are for her.

The people who think posting pictures of children looking sick, or worse, dead children, is a great way to spread awareness.

The parents whose children are cancer survivors - so far - and now spend all of their time on the Advocacy Soapbox because they still have hope.

F*#& that.  I will not use Keeghan to get people to feel sorry for me.  Don’t feel sorry for me; feel sorry for my son who only got to live to be 12.  

I will not use pictures of him as he was dying to scare people into awareness.  

I will not lie and pretend to have hope anymore.  Sure, I have high hopes for the children who are survivors because I don’t want any more children to die, but I cannot pretend that I have hope for me anymore.  No new treatment or cure can give me what I want most.

Which brings me to my recent epiphany.  I’ve been dreading this five-year anniversary of Keeghan’s death for a long time now.  Five years.  In the cancer world, you pray to make it to five years cancer free.  That magic “cure” time.  Not all cancers are considered cured at five years, but it’s still a major goal to reach.  No one prays to reach the five-year anniversary of a death though.  

But in a way, I feel like I have been looking forward to this one.  Laying in bed one morning this month, after waking (once again) from a dream of Keeghan, it hit me.  Why this anniversary is so big.  Subconsciously, the thought is there that I’ve finally made it to five years and, against all odds, my marriage is still intact, my daughter is still alive and well, and I am still reasonably sane (depending on your perspective).

I’ve passed the test.  I’ve done it.

So now give him back.

I’ve proven I could do it, even though I never though I could.  I never wanted to.  But I did it.  I gave him up, watched him die, and survived.

So can the test end now?  Can I please just have him back?

That is what I’ve spent this month thinking.  No matter how much logic I throw at myself, no matter how much reality I face, the bottom line is that I want him back.

No one on Facebook can help me with this.  I don’t need a bunch of people saying, “I’m so sorry hon!” or “big hugs” or just posting hearts in response.  I’m not looking for support.  The fact that so many people care is nice, but it doesn’t help.  Not this month.  Because there is no one who knows how I feel.  

I have friends who have also lost a child, but they still do not know how I feel because they’re not Shannon, and they didn’t lose Keeghan.  Only I know how that feels, just as Mike is the only one who knows how MIKE feels having lost Keeghan.  Same goes for Mackenzie.  

You.  Do.  Not.  Know.

Which leads me to one more reason for deactivating Facebook.  We call all of the people we know on Facebook friends, but are they?  For me the answer to that is “no.”  Here is how my Facebook “friends” are divided:

• People I have known at some point in my life but never kept in touch with before Facebook
• People I’ve never met but know through old blog sites
• Military acquaintances from past places we have lived
• Cancer world 
• Family members
• Real friends

Now, some people fall into more than one category.  True friends that I’ve never met in person.  People from the cancer and military worlds who I am now closer to than I am to my own family.  And then there are the people who I met through cancer, but are also military families and people I consider true friends.  The “gray friend” because they don’t fall into one black-and-white category.

The problem comes from the people who are not “friends” - not in the true sense of the word (talking pre-Facebook definitions now) - but who think they are because we’ve met once and they have a child who had cancer, and so did I and now they feel they have the right to know what I am doing at all times.

Again, f*#& that.  

I’m just trying to keep it real.  I care about a lot of people, but if they disappear from Facebook, it isn’t my place to try to get in their business and find out why.  Facebook “friendship” is not real friendship.  It’s a virtual backyard social at best.  Fun at times, and at others a total train wreck.  

So if I want to turn it off for a while, let me.  That’s really all I ask.