Brain Candy, Meal Trains and Other Unmentionables

My best friend Deirdre has been diagnosed with... I feel like if I say it out loud it might hear me, so I'll take her lead and call it "Brain Candy." Or Sara. I called it a loogie in my poem. Anything but what it actually is.My reaction hasn't made much sense to me. "Taking it in stride" seems to best describe it, and yet doesn't seem appropriate. Another bump in the fabric of the universe, another curve ball. I find myself assuming that she will get some treatment and come out the other side. Of course she will.Of course she will.Another journey has begun, one that I have every intention of tripping along down the path with her on, as best I can. There are a lot of people who have the same intention and so right off the bat, I have discovered the strange paradox of being a patient: you have to manage all those "helpers." As if you don't already have enough to worry about.I am aware that the tables have turned and I am now on the other side of all those who tried to help me in the days and weeks after 9/11. Of course, the first thing I thought of was a meal train. My meal train all those years ago, consisted of a bright green sheet of paper taped to my kitchen cabinet where people came and signed up for meals. I would get phone calls every morning asking how many people they needed to cook for. I had to buy a freezer for the leftovers. I received more carrot soup, fruit salad, lasagna and bagels than I knew what to do with.I asked a friend, (who strangely enough had just lost her best friend to brain candy. Is this an epidemic?) if she knew of a meal train app, but she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. An aside: I actually hate the word "meal." Oddly enough, Arron and I often exchanged our list of hated words, and it was one of his too. We've even passed our dislike of the word "meal" onto our children. Other hated words: loaf, panties, crotch.Perhaps not ironic then, that this word likes to haunt me. It's getting it's revenge on me.So now it's my turn. Turns out there IS an app for that. It's called... yup... you guessed it... Mealtrain.com. It's kinda awesome. You can select a series of dates for which meals are needed, add notes about likes and dislikes and then add the emails of friends and family who can come and sign up to bring meals on specific dates. They get email reminders when the date they signed up for rolls around.OK, so meals. check. Taking it in stride. Another bump in the path. We got this.She is writing an awesome blog about her experience and like any good writer has already conceived the book that she hopes to write from it. Deirdre is about the only person I can think of that can make "brain candy" sound fun. For one, she calls it "brain candy." She got a cute pixie cut. She is discovering everything from Reiki to Buddhism to hypnotherapy. Her and her husband are excited that the radiation unit waiting room looks like the lobby of a W Hotel. She wonders if they offer discounts at the cemetery across the street. She goes to Burlesque shows and comes up with new ideas for her latest movie script, based on the lessons she is learning.I laugh right along with her, the black humor rife between us. I hope I'm saying the right things, doing the right things. All I can be to her is all I've ever been to her – a friend. Funny how brain candy somehow makes the simple things seem complicated. Makes you question all that you know.I am grateful for my experiences – “the roller coaster journey I have already undertaken – “that's prepared me to walk this road with Deirdre. Like so many people in crisis, she is already teaching us about life as she faces death. I marvel at her capacity to live and enjoy life despite the threat of brain candy and all that it entails.I hope I can impart something back to her, maybe that lack of fear that I have unwittingly gained – the sense that there is life beyond life. I know for many this is a cockamamie notion, a folly, a brainwash, or whatever you want to call it, but for me it has power. Living without fear of what life may throw at you simply enriches your life.I met a comedian today named Wali Collins who's written a book called "The Y'nevano Book of Encouragement: Living a Regretless Life." I know you're all guessing at "Y'nevano." No, it's not some ancient lost language – Just read it as "You Never Know." There are no coincidences.I think that is Deirdre's strength. She has always lived a "Y'nevano" life. She wanted to paint her dining room pink, so she did. She wanted to make a movie about burlesque and she did it. She wanted to write a book, and she's almost finished that too. She wanted to write a script about "boylesque" and now she's improving it with her latest life lessons.The last page in Wali's book is about Legacy. He writes: "Do something that shows the world that you were here and you lived a life. Your legacy will speak of you long after you are gone." Y'nevano.