Beginnings are scary.

Endings are usually sad,

but it’s what’s in the

middle that counts.

So, when you find yourself

at the beginning,

just give hope a chance to float up.

It will.

As of today, Tim and I have been married 35 years, 5 months and 1 day — that equates to 12,926 days, give or take a few missed Leap Years. That also means that on 12,926 evenings, Mr. Wonderful has asked me if I’d like a cup of tea and a couple Figgie cookies when he makes his nightly Lipton. For 12,926 nights I have replied, “No thanks,” and on plenty of nights I’ve snipped, “I don’t want a cup of tea! Why do you keep asking me?” 

A cancer diagnosis is tough. Hearing the disease is throughout your entire body and there is nothing that can be done is: shocking, sickening, terrifying, saddening, maddening, numbing — go ahead and pick one of these, or all of these, or find your own words to imagine how you might feel. I felt them all, and I feel them all over and over and over, again. Within a matter of one month, I went from complete ignorance that I was even sick to discussions about hospice.

I have to tell you, ever since I heard I have to limit my movements and stay at home until the ortho part of this is figured out, I have a whole new pain — and it’s in my ass.

Pleased as punch I was when Tim’s mother came to meet her newest grandchild. “Our daughter’s name is Hannah-Leigh Elizabeth,” I beamed, “the Elizabeth being added in honor of your mother,” I gushed. Within seconds I went from happy new mom to potential star on an episode of She Snapped.

He was recently back from Texas and he was all Yee-Haw grown up and hot and sexy in his Wranglers and white button-down shirt with the sleeves cuffed back to his elbows, standing lean-to against a wall holding a beer. I was lassoed and we started a thing that night — a fling, most people figured.

Tragic news hits me like a sucker punch; it knocks the breath free and when breathable air returns, I manage to say something — hopefully, it is the right thing, the understanding thing, the supportive thing; and then I walk away because I can.

Someone asked me if I am mad at God.

To be perfectly honest, the question caught me off guard. It never occurred to me that that was an option.

For the record, I am not mad at God. I don’t think He got up one day and said, “Hmmmmm, I’m gonna screw with Sheryll O’Brien and I’m gonna screw with her big time.”

I woke this morning replaying the words I heard yesterday — “You have incurable metastatic breast cancer.”

Really hard words to hear, nearly impossible to process. So, on this morning, I have decided the diagnosis doesn’t matter because it is a beautiful crisp fall morning, with leaves in all their autumnal glory — of course they are all over my yard and driveway, but that is Tim’s issue to deal with.

Perhaps that efficiency, coupled with my showing up for the breast cancer two-step and being sent off with the welcomed pronouncement, “That’s it. You’re five years out. You are a survivor, so off you go, now,” were at the core of my belief that the worst was behind me. Those words lulled me into a state of stupid.