She whupped a healing on her!

  Dear Gentle Reader,

I'm sharing with you another bit of my book, "Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  

When you have finished reading, PLEASE leave me a comment.  Just look for "Comment" or "No Comment" at the end, click on it then sign on as Anonymous if you want, then leave me some feedback.  I really need it and thank you so much for it!!!

She whupped a healing on her!

Dear Girlfriend.

As I've said before, my mother lives in an assisted living home. I usually drive to Columbus twice a week to see her. Well, before I went into the hospital, I told the director of the home and a couple of Mama's favorite caregivers that I had cancer and was about to go in the for surgery. I remember telling this one particular caregiver, I'll call Sally, that I was going into the hospital and I might not be able to see Mama for a few days. She hugged me and said that she would pray for me.

Now I have a sister, Cea, that is twelve years older than I am. We look very much alike except that Cea is older. So I had my surgery and staph infection and immediately went back to visit Mama, but I just didn't run into Sally for two or three weeks. She must have been working on the night shift. So in the meanwhile my sister, Cea, came from Virginia to visit Mama. Sally ran into Cea in the hall of the home and thought Cea was me. She got a horrified look on her face as much to say, “I can sure tell you've been sick! You've aged ten years in the past few weeks!” Then she took Cea in her arms and she said, “Oh I need to pray for you! Dear Lord bless this woman and make her well! Heal her Lord! Heal her!Hold her up through her times of suffering! Bless her sweet Lord! Bless this poor woman!”

Cea knew that Sally thought she was me, but she didn't want to interrupt such fine praying and she didn't want to embarrass Sally. So Cea just let Sally whup a healing on her and she thanked Sally very much. Then Cea called me on the phone and told me what happened. We just cracked up. I said, “Why didn't you tell her you were not me?” Cea said, “Are you kidding? I need all the prayers I can get!” So a couple of more weeks went by and I ran into Sally at the assisted living home. When she saw me I said, “Sally, thank you so much for your prayers. I feel good.” Sally was grinning from ear to ear and said, “I can tell you feel better. You are sure looking better than the last time I saw you!”

He was jumping around like a monkey!

Dear Gentle Readers,

Today's post is one of the funny chapters from my book, "Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  This shows that even though I had cancer, I was still Suzan. Cancer could not steal my funny memories....

Dear Girlfriend,

When we first met in January of 1974, we were seniors in high school. When my mama and daddy met in 1938, they were in high school. That was the day of big band music. Every weekend my parents would go to a big pavilion in Columbus called The Idle Hour, where they would jitterbug the night away. Even though their relationship was rocky from day one, when he held her in his arms on a dance floor they had chemistry. They won dance contest after dance contest.

The whole time I was growing up all of my brothers and sisters loved to dance. We had a stereo in the living room. My sisters who were ten to fourteen years older than I, would turn on Chubby Checker and dance. When I was only five years old my sister took a home movie of me doing the peppermint twist. It was not unusual for one of my teenage sisters and her boyfriend to be slow dancing in the living room while I watched.

My mother always danced while she stirred gravy. Her hand holding the spoon would be going around while her shoulders and hips swayed to the music. I remember once in the 1960's after she and daddy had separated , she was just stirring that gravy while singing along with the radio to I Can't Get No Satisfaction. So when Walker asked me to go to the prom in 1974, I expected him to dance. I was all dressed up in a red ironclad polyester formal . He had rented a tux with a ruffled shirt and had pulled his shoulder length hair back and tied it in a ponytail with a black velvet ribbon. We were styling!But when we got to the dance I was so disappointed that my handsome prince would not dance.

We married in 1976 when disco was all the rage. In the late seventies, John Travolta was busy ruining his back in “Saturday Night Fever.” Wasn't he a hottie?! Walker and I at that time were living in Athens, Georgia, and going to the University of Georgia. To say we were living on a shoe string would be too generous. Let's say we were living on some scraggly little fuzz that hangs off a shoe string after its been in the tennis shoe about ten years. We were so broke Walker actually handmade our wedding invitations and delivered them on a bicycle to save the money for postage stamps. So, for us to actually go out to a disco was a big deal. Waitresses hated us because we would buy one beer and nurse it all night.

But, it was my birthday so we decided to go out. We went to a disco in downtown Athens that had a cover charge. After paying the cover we really only had money left for one drink. Now you have to remember that this was 1976. At that time in Athens, Georgia, black kids and white kids went to class together, but partied at different locations. Thank God we are past those days. So we paid our cover and when we got inside we realized that we were the only white people in the place. That didn't bother us and none of the black kids seemed to notice we were there, so we sat down and ordered our beers. When the waitress brought them Walker hollered in my ear over the loud music, “Drink it slow!” I longingly watched the other kids dance as he crumpled up little pieces of his napkin and put them in his ears. Everywhere there was sparkly light reflecting out of a large mirrored ball that hung over the dance floor. Walker and I just sat and sipped our beers and watched all those fellows in platform shoes get down.

There was a big long box about four feet high and twelve feet long out in the middle of the dance floor. It was covered in bright green shag carpet and had steps that you could walk up to be elevated so everyone could focus on the really good dancers up on this platform.“Wow!!! They can really dance!!! Look at their clothes!!!” I yelled in Walker's ear. “I'd rather die than get up on that thing!!!” he yelled back. “I'm going to the bathroom!!!” I hollered back and he nodded.

Now you know what the ladies room in a bar is like. All the girls have got a little buzz on and they all laugh and talk to each other even if they are total strangers. I told that to Walker once and he said, “Nobody talks in the men's room. We just do our doings and get out of there.” But as I stood in line waiting for a stall to come open, a group of six rather rotund girls came in behind me. They were all laughing and talking and having a good time. One of them said, “How come y'all aren't dancing? Don't you like the music?” I said, “Oh,we love the music, but I can't get my husband to dance . He never dances with me.” One of the girls that had a pretty major buzz, put her arm around my shoulder like we were long time friends. She started rocking her head from side to side and said ,“Girlfriend,we can sure fix that!” The other five girls all started laughing and giving each other the high five. “Honey, you just wait for us at the table, but don't you let on to your husband!”

So I just went back and sat down and sipped my drink. In a minute I saw the six girls headed straight for our table. They were laughing and giggling when the one I had talked to in the bathroom put her hand on Walker's shoulder and said, “Come dance with us!” Walker looked like he was about to faint as they all six pulled him up out of his chair and literally dragged him up the steps of the green shag carpeted platform. He turned and looked at me with the look of a condemned man being drug up the steps of a scaffold. I, of coarse, was enjoying every minute of this.

The six girls formed two lines and proceeded to bump Walker back and forth between them with their hips as the disco music blared out of the huge speakers so loudly that Walker stuck his fingers in his ears. He was as stiff as an old man with arthritis! He looked so pitiful until they all started pushing him back and forth amongst them while they were putting the bump and grind down on him. The D.J. started playing Disco Inferno by The Trammps. I was just cracking up! The music was blaring out so loudly that you could see the speakers vibrating. About that time I saw Walker was clapping his hands and jumping around like a monkey! He was bumping and jumping and winding and grinding while all six of those rather healthy looking girls worked him over real good. They had somehow flipped his switch! When the song was over he actually looked disappointed as they took him by the hand and brought him back to our table. We were all laughing so hard we could hardly breathe. Then the ringleader of the girls put her hands on her hips, rocked her head from side to side, pushed Walker towards me and said, “Honey, we fixed him good!”

I owe an awful lot to those six girls because after that night Walker became a dancing fool. One time in the 1980's we went to a New Year's Eve party at the Columbus Country Club. I looked around and there was Walker doing the funky chicken with my brother-in-law. When Walker went back to work at the Georgia Forestry Commission on Monday, a man who had seen him dancing at the club told all the men that Walker supervised, “Boys, I hate to break it to you, but I saw your boss down at the Columbus Country Club dancing like a chicken with another man!” All the fellas said, “Boss man! Tell us it ain't so!”

I remember the last big New Year's Eve party we hosted . Walker was wearing what was supposed to be a toga but it came off looking more like Ebenezer Scrooge's nightgown. He had a wreath on his head made of gold laurel leaves. My nephew Todd and I were sitting together on the staircase as Walker was trying to jitterbug with my niece, Susan. He was pretty lit up and every time he twirled her around, he did it so fast and hard I was afraid he was going to throw her out the window. I said to Todd, “Now that is something I will remember the rest of my life.” Todd just looked at me, shook his head and said, “That's too scary to think about!” See, I keep telling you these little flashbacks from my life so that you will believe me that cancer can't steal your memories. It can't steal your stories.

Girlfriend advice: Keep on dancing! Drag your husband into the living room, put on your favorite music and dance. When you are all alone at home and the fear of the future starts to overwhelm you, turn up your music as loud as you can and dance and dance until you drop. It will make you feel so much better. If you can hardly put one foot in front of the other from radiation or chemotherapy, when you feel your worst, start as slowly as you need to but do it! You won't believe how much better you will feel.

When we got back to the cottage long after midnight on that New Year's Eve of 2009, I felt so happy. I had such high hopes for 2010. I built a fire in my little fireplace and snuggled up in a soft blanket with my hot chocolate and I thought about how my life was going to be so much better than at had been in 2009. Thank God we can't see too far down the road....