COME OUT OF HIDING

She lost her hair in San Francisco, four weeks ago, on the windy Bay Ferry as she laughed and took pictures of me hanging over the boat's edge, one shaky hand on her iPhone, the other holding a steaming cup of coffee. She lost it as she tried on antique earrings at the Alameda Flea Market. She lost it as cold, white wind hit our faces on the tops of tourist buses.  She lost it in handfuls in our tiny bathroom at The Chancellor Hotel, strands falling like dandelion wishes on the sink next to the complementary soap and shampoo. She lost it at the Sunday Farmer's Market as I devoured raw oysters and local peaches, she lost it watching seagulls. She lost it smiling, she lost it dancing to her favourite song, she lost it sleeping, she lost it lamp shopping in The Mission. And how lucky am I? To see her staring in the mirror as sun streaks through the 13th floor hotel window, trying on earrings and lipstick, seeing what works with this new look. How lucky am I? To be witness to the beautiful losing, knowing that there's somehow a winning buried in this somewhere. 

This was her second trip to San Francisco. The first was years ago, before I was born, when she and my dad were first married. She joined him on a business trip and recalled how disappointed she was in a red Golden Gate Bridge. Memories of Irish Whiskeys drunk and streets devoured, and of bell bottoms rocked no doubt. As we road atop the tourist bus a few weeks ago, she spotted the very bar they spent their evenings in. I imagined my dad there, the life of the party to my mom's shy, the story teller to the listener, the extrovert to the odd, the jokester to the laugher, the pianist to the pitch-less. They are perfect in my memories, my parents together, their 42 years, me in 34 of them, my brother in 33. That's what memories do; they become perfect, and the rough edges of people smooth out and they glisten in your mind. 

But my dad wasn't perfect.

So far from it. He'd laugh if he could read this, but not the part about my mom losing her hair. He'd be shocked that cancer didn't die with him this past January, but seemed to jump ship instead. 

I can't believe it either. These past three months don't feel real. May 30th was her radical surgery; the radical midline cut starting from her bellybutton down, the Frankenstein staples holding her guts together, organs there her whole life gone in hours (jerks she didn't need anymore anyway). Days in the hospital, night sweats and nausea. And memories of my dad's fading to contend with; closets barely emptied, hangers still swinging on the racks, good suits and golf shirts delivered to The Salvation Army only weeks before.

Cancer in real life is nothing like the movies. 

But neither is grace. 

We have now just passed through three of six chemotherapy cycles. Her diagnosis has changed from one extremely rare and aggressive cancer to another, from carcinosarcoma of the fallopian tube to undifferentiated carcinoma. Two labs, two teams of pathologists, two different conclusions drawn, both knocking the wind out of us. But, human nature mingled with inherited God-nature makes us such hope-hunting creatures. And for hope we've definitely hunted. We're hopeful that this was caught before symptoms appeared, we're hopeful because it appears to be Stage 1C (confined to the offending organ and only a few rogue cells floating angrily around her pelvis), we're hopeful that she was optimally debulked in surgery, we're hopeful because we have a team of physicians working with us (from her primary oncologist to two naturopathic oncologists offering thorough adjuvant treatment options beyond chemo). 

Now, here's where I should shift my prose to God-talk. Here feels like a good place in this story, a Christian-y place, to write eloquently about a hope in Christ that trumps all earthly, shifting hopes. Here's where I should say that a peace that passes understanding blankets me, my mom, our family. I'm a worship leader for an international church in Hong Kong, so here feels like the right time to say that James 1: 2-4 has been my scripture jam, that I've had it tattooed on my wrist underneath a black-inked lion. Here feels like the right time for me to tell you that I've considered all of this joy, these trials of many kinds, because it develops a perseverance in me so that I'll mature and lack nothing. 

But, that wouldn't be real. When I hold my mom's hand as they put a needle through the surgical port in her chest, encouraging her to consider it joy just doesn't feel right (it may be right, but you give it a try). As I put my own health issues on the back burner and try to forget the forceful trigeminy arhythmic pounding in my chest, the trial doesn't feel joy-worthy. In church last Sunday, I sat with a friend whose bones and brain have been wracked by Stage IV cancer as she fought through a sight-blurring headache, and fought to stay lucid during worship. We didn't have the song "Happy Day" in the lineup last Sunday, but imagine if we had? How would God have met her in that song? I know He would have, I just don't know how. I held her, hugged her, saw such beauty in her, mourned with her. 

Thank God for C.S. Lewis and others, like the Psalmists, like Jesus, who don't make life pretty but do breathe life into the weird concept of pain and beauty as partners. 

In A Grief Observed, Lewis writes: “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” 

Amen and amen. 

I love that the author and dreamer of Narnia, of Aslan, a great Jesus-like-lion called his own faith a house of cards: "God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.” 

Consider my temple officially knocked down. 

Do I put my hope in Christ? Every ounce of it. Every atom of it. Every electron. Do I trust Him? I do. The same way I trust fire to be white hot, the same way I trust snow to be white cold. I trust Him to the extreme. Because either I hope and trust Him with ferocity, or there's no point in hoping or trusting at all. He's not a lukewarm God, He makes that clear. But I do not like the experiences that He's asking me to trust Him through. And I do not have to like them to trust Him, thank God. 

Do I think He's strong? Yes. Loving? The ultimate Romancer. Creative? Oh my goodness, have you seen my cat's eyes? Or sunsets in Boracay? 

Do I think He's good, joy-worthy? Completely. But mysteriously. It's a mystery that I can see my dad go from dad to dead, from blood-pumping to blood-stilled and know I've just witnessed someone receiving the bounty from the greatest victory in history, the victory over death. I saw my dad get swallowed up by Life and on earth, to my tear-filled eyes, the scene before me was only a skeleton with cold hands under heavy blankets, but in another realm it must have looked magnificent. It's a mystery that my mom can lose her hair while staring at Alcatraz and that our first reaction was to change the lyrics of Tony Bennett's old song from "I Left My Heart in..." to "I Lost My Hair in San Francisco". Laughing the entire time. It's a mystery that my mom's first reaction to her diagnosis was gratitude for the goodness God has shown her throughout life, a counting and recounting of blessings. 

As I walk this out and write about it here - as a daughter who's just lost her dad, a daughter whose mom is fighting the battle of her life half way around the world, as a worship leader for a large English speaking church in Hong Kong, as a writer of songs that people sing, a pop musician and lifestyle writing hopeful -  I don't expect that I'll be able to do anything prettily.  But I don't think we need pretty faith as much as we need faith-fought-for, raw, run over and redeemed. 

I hope my faith is blossoming into the sort that allows me to stare at the bald, sick heads of my beloveds, hate it for them, but still sing.