One, Two, Three, a Barn Owl and Me!

I stood outside and stared up at the black night sky, wondering if I am the only person who views the nightline and sees it as if we are somehow in a globe. For me, it is the night sky most that places such an emphasis on how small we are and for just how beautiful this world is when everything is still and there is nothing but quiet to be heard all around you.

I am suddenly jerked from my solitude when I hear him. It is a beautiful barn owl that appears to have come to roost in my son’s now rickety old treehouse that sits high above me in the large oak at the far end of our backyard. “Whooo, whoooooo,” he exclaims loudly as if he is directing his vocals right at me. How odd to see this night flight ling within such a close proximity to the suburbs. I had only ever heard of owls in stories I read as a child. Withstanding only once when I chaperoned my son’s kindergarten class field trip to the local zoo and there was an owl that was brought around the room for each child to admire up close. Such a majestic looking creature I can clearly recall being revered as he had made his appearance in front of my son and I. Other than that controlled meeting, I had never witnessed an actual owl living in the wild, much less right here in a suburban cul-de-sac. I am nothing if not superstitious, therefore I begin now to allow myself to draw from the very deep well of what my late grandmother truly believed were insightful sayings. We were to take them in like tall drinks of water in order to nourish ourselves and prepare for the harsh world that awaited us out there.

A few nights later I would awake in a panic, sweating so profusely even the bedding seemed to be saturated. I felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath and my mind raced. I found it difficult to process my surroundings for what seemed like an eternity. I sat up and tried to remember what had awoken me again and there is a fear that washes over me like a nausea coming from deep within the pit of my stomach. No, wait, that is true nausea! I jumped from my bed and rush to the bathroom. It was much later that night when I had emerged feeling somewhat less nauseated yet still shaken from whatever dream that must have woken me. The wind outside sounded as if it were a giant breaking through the forest ripping trees from the earth as it approached the edge of our backyard. I slipped onto the back deck just as the wind had settled. The sky was illuminated with a large chalky white moon dangling on a backdrop of deep purple. There was an eerie feeling that seemed to take me in and wrap its cold arms around me. I found myself wandering past our pool towards the property line where the forest meets our backyard. I am now standing under my son’s treehouse again thinking of all the fun we used to have picnicking up there, playing toy trains and laughing for hours while the world around us slipped away. A smile slid across my face as a mother’s will when she is fondly remembering the days when she can still pick her child up in her arms and hold them close. Those days that seem to pass too quickly. Just as I had smiled that motherly smile and glanced up at what was now becoming an eyesore on our property line, I am once again startled to my core. What appeared to be a pair of enormous clear green eyes were staring right back at me! I let out a yelp and as I did, he swooped down in a manner that it seemed like he was diving right at my head. Apparently, this guy had set up residence in our abandoned treehouse, I thought, as I ran back towards my house, through the gate, up the stairs and slammed my bedroom door as quickly as my shaky legs could possibly carry me. As the door slammed behind me, I began to laugh in an almost hysterical fashion.

I was astounded most when this barn owl came to visit me for a third night. Perched right outside my bedroom on the deck railing, I see him and first think he is the family cat. Upon moving closer to the door, I see him, so close now I can almost touch the tips of his tail feathers. I am in utter amazement at the thought of something so unusual and yet so beautiful would just appear out of nowhere in our backyard. Just as quickly as that astonishment had entered my mind, it is quickly washed away, the same as the sands are washed away when the tide comes in and carries them back out to sea. Leaving me feeling somewhat sad and with a strong feeling of foreboding I could not explain. What was the ‘old wives' tale my grandmother used to say about signs and how they came in threes? I shake it off as I turned to go back inside. Suddenly I felt a chill more than just the brisk night air blowing through my thin pink pajamas, it felt as if I am chilled to the bone.

I didn’t receive another visit from my nocturnal friend for many nights and I had almost forgotten him when I received the call. “Metastasized,” my doctor was saying through the other end of the phone. All the words that follow I could barely begin to comprehend as my mind was frozen on this one word and what I could register concerning its meaning. Afterall, shouldn’t I be an expert in all thing's cancer by now, having lost my dad just a decade ago when I was young and just starting my family. My twelve-year son’s face flashes before my eyes like a projection movie film being displayed on the inside of my eyelids, so I close them tightly as to shut out the image which has struck me just as heavy and lead hard as a gut punch from Mike Tyson. As surely as I do though, my then four-year-old son’s face is the next to appear and linger in my now lifetime’s favorites playing inside my head. “Yes, yes,” I say to whatever follow up she is now suggesting and quickly hit the red dot on my cell as if hitting the red button to nuke all that is on the other end and rid myself of the past three minutes.

I can remember throughout life hearing people say, “why him or why her?” as if because a person is good or kind that somehow excludes them from anything undesirable ever happening to them in life. This was never my thought process upon my diagnosis. I supposed, “why not me?” There have been other mothers before me, other wives and other daughters. I understand that I although I am very fortunate, but I am not the most beloved woman to be told that she was going to die at an early age. Afterall, it wasn’t myself for whom I felt sorrow, rather it was my children and the knowing there would be no one with whom I could ensure a life like the one I had planned to spend with them. There would be no one to love them the way I did. It was then I decided I would not fear but pray and have faith that this would not be easy, no, but I would get it taken out and I would live, not for myself but for my sons, who needed my life much more than I did now.

Once I had the diagnosis, life became just a series of steps, there was immediate surgery to insert the port that would carry the life-saving poison directly into my bloodstream for the next two years, then there were doctor appointments to discuss the therapy schedule ahead and then I would undergo surgery to remove large portions of my insides and more chemotherapy. For me the plan was comforting as I am a confront the problem head on person. Then it began, the endless hours of small rooms with the chemotherapy being pumped into my body sitting across the man you promised to love until death be parted. I wondered if he had regretted those words now. It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been in that room all the emotions you go through, but guilt is at the top of the list. Guilty for things in your life that you have done, guilty for things in your life that you have not done and guilty for your death in the same exact fashion. I was at least lucky enough to have found myself sitting across from someone every day who met my sickly gazes with a smile when there was very little left to smile about. Statistically, I was told I had less than a ten percent chance of making it through the year.

I consider myself a person who relies more on faith than statistics. Even so, the most faithful can be tested during the lowest times. Each time I was told that my chances were slim it was as if I were an apple tree and someone were coming and plucking an apple from my branches. Every piece of bad news, every test or statistic that I was quoted that told me I wouldn’t live to see my children grow made the tree more barren.

It was on these nights I would go out to the edge of our yard and look for him, chemo bag strapped to my side, with the endless sound of the pump as it continued to push medicine into my body. Where was my nocturnal friend now, whom I was certain had come to warn me of all that lie ahead. Was he in someone else’s backyard now, also warning them of some unknown life altering event just ahead. The box churns again to bring me back from my thoughts. I turn back towards my house where warm light is glowing in the night and reflects off the water on our pool. It is a mansion by my childhood standards, all I had dreamed of giving to my children so they could be proud of their home. I will not leave them here or the man that I promised a life to.

Today, I am three and half years into my remission from stage four colon cancer. I was told that I would not see the end of 2018. My nocturnal friend has not returned to visit me, nor do I long to see him lurking deep in the night.