The really long/short way between life and death

Spoiler alert: I'm an auntie! My brother and sister-in-law delivered a beautiful baby girl yesterday at about 9am Houston time. She is the first grandchild on both sides, and both sets of grandparents - one from California and one from China - were there to meet her on her first day of life.

But let me back up.

Yesterday was also the close to a whirlwind, post-Christmas trip to see members of Michael's family, we finally arrived home yesterday. The last leg of our seven legged journey to Virginia and Florida and back was a drive from Chesapeake, VA to Rochester. It happened to take us directly into the giant storm that dumped snow all over the midwest and northeast, so the trip took us about 11 hours. We left at 9am and pulled into our mostly-plowed driveway about 8pm, and after doing a little shoveling that the plow couldn't reach, and unpacking our car, we collapsed in gratitude and fatigue.

The centerpiece of our trip was four days in Florida to visit Michael's dad in Florida. Karl has been battling colorectal cancer for about four years. There was a reprieve last summer, when suddenly the scans could no longer detect the tumors. No sooner had we received this wonderful news than I was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Our focus and prayers turned to me. Fifteen months later, I was coming back to life after my second mastectomy, and just beginning to crawl out of my hole of recovery, when Karl had a round of scans that showed his cancer was back, in his lungs, and growing. Our prayers turned once again, and so did our travel priorities: while the rest of my family gathered in Houston to await the birth of Baby Johnson, I went with Michael to Florida to spend some time with his dad (constantly checking my phone, of course, for word that the babe was born!).

The trip was good. We had some good, quality, intentional, and fun time with Karl and his wife, Michael's step-mom. We went with them to church, a very nice Lutheran church they have recently joined and love. We went to see some manatees, and some other marine life. We had a wonderful New Year's Eve dinner. We also started work on Karl's Christmas present: we gave him a video recorder with the instruction to share some of his favorite stories, stories that will help our future children to know their grandfather. Our first afternoon in Florida was spent recording stories of Michael's birth, and of Karl's first days in the Navy. We were extremely grateful to spend this time with him - cancer has a way of making you appreciate time with your loved ones in a way different from before.

The night before we were to start driving back to Rochester from Virginia (where Michael's mom is), I received a text saying my sister-in-law's water had broken. And just over an hour after we were on the road in the morning, I got word: "She's here!" Michael and I squealed and cooed with delight with each picture my dad emailed us. As I gazed at this beautiful bundle of wonder, amazed that my older brother had helped make this, tears started streaming down my face.

Laika Lihua Johnson

The Johnson/Xu family

This beautiful life! This lovely girl! This little chestnut flower! (That is what her middle name, Lihua, means - "little chestnut flower.") Looking at her, I could imagine her warmth, her smell. I could envision her mom's exhausted smile, and my brother's proud and delighted grin.

I could practically taste the hope of this being Michael and me in the next year or two. I can taste it even now.

We rode the high from this event for much of the rest of the journey north, as I would periodically receive another photo by email, or go back and look again at the ones I had already received. Even with all the snow, even with as much as I wanted to be there to hold my new niece in person, what a beautiful day it was. We were so grateful to be home that we didn't mind the little bit of shoveling we had to do, and then we happily settled onto our couch.

Shortly thereafter, we received word from Karl about his doctor's appointment that day. And the news wasn't good. In short, there are no more treatment options available. The doctor said he could look into some clinical trials some other institutions might be doing, but otherwise the best bet was to try again the drugs from four years ago, in hopes that his body would have "forgotten" them and so be responsive to them once again. The way Karl stated this was fairly matter-of-fact, accepting, and with very little acknowledgement that this could lick him. "I'm still planning my 70th birthday in 2017," he said. He has no intention of letting that pesky little cancer bring him down just yet.

Michael and I didn't talk about this much last night - we have already talked about it many times before - but I couldn't help but be torn between how our journey that day had begun, with tears of joy at a beautiful new life, and how the journey had ended, with those difficult words, "There's not really anything more we can do." The distance between those extremes - 587 miles, 11 hours, one leg of a journey, 67 years - was difficult to hold in juxtaposition. Add to it my own recent victory over cancer, and the hope that Michael and I will someday soon have a bundle of life in our arms that combines our Rehbaum/Johnson features, and it is enough to make a compassionate heart ache.

Mine is a faith that regularly lifts up the life and death dichotomy. But it never gets easier to comprehend in day to day life. To focus on life in response to condemning words. To learn to love in a way previous unknown. To see another's joy in a way that you may or may not ever experience yourself. To have your heart cracked open to the extremes of emotion and experience, and still to offer your best attempt at love. These are the ways of Life. They hurt, they are hard, but they are, indeed, Life.