I meant to make a post about September being Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. And now it’s almost over.

I meant to do a lot of things. But life feels a lot like hanging onto a speeding vehicle for dear life right now.

It’s been almost a year since her diagnosis and it just now occurs to me that I might be depressed. I keep trying to convince myself that it is just the disruption of seasons changing, but everything feels so so heavy lately. I feel like my heart is in a permanent state of broken.

Tomorrow is October 1st. I love October. For the past many years I have done amazing things in October – traveled to Iceland and New Mexico, studied with amazing teachers, watched the stars from places where you can see almost all of them, stood at the edge of the world in the salty spray of the North Atlantic, sat in the ancient waters of the southwest, wrapped myself in magic and awe. Brought myself back to life.

Tomorrow we will kick off October with Scan Day. A PET and CT scan in the morning and an MRI in the afternoon, sandwiched between a day of driving.

Scan Anxiety sneaks up on me now. The last few scans have shown good news – shrinking and or disappearing tumors. There’s no reason to think anything would be different this time.

But here we are, always and forever on the edge of the unknown. Driving headlong into a future we can’t see on account of all the bugs on the windshield – the steady stream of shit we can only drive straight through. It’s the only way.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about scan anxiety. It’s not fear of the scans themselves – it’s fear of the phone call that comes after. That moment the number pops up on the screen and I know I have to answer it – when I try to gauge from the first words out of his mouth, from his tone, what he is going to say next.

Hurry up and say it.

And then what? What he says next changes everything. It changes what we do next. It changes who we are.

How does someone prepare for a phone call like that?

I don’t know. I don’t know how yet. I probably never will.

Because it’s not the phone call itself that is terrifying, is it. That’s just a random person on the other end of the line saying words, telling me something that is already true long before I know it. The only thing that changes is now I know.

It’s the knowing and how I will feel about it. Am I strong enough to feel this? I’m never sure.

So instead I sit here with my broken heart behind a dirty windshield holding the hands that reach out to me, breathing when I’m told to breathe, absorbing prayers like a dry riverbed longing for rain.

Tomorrow is October and October is a time for magic. For awe. For standing at the edge of the world, arms wide, heart open.

What else can you do.