Chapter 13: What Do We Tell the Children?

During this time Mark and I spend a lot of time talking about what we were going to tell the girls. At this point they knew that something was wrong, but they were not sure what. They noticed the tension in the house, and the extra phone calls. I usually talk to my sisters and father a few times a month, now I was talking to them a few times a week. My kids knew that something was up.
Mark and I talked to friends and family about how to approach the subject of my illness and we consult a few books on the subject. Each had a different point of view. Some said to tell them everything, and some said to tell them nothing. We went with the "tell them everything" theory, probably because it is in my nature to blab. Maybe it was because I used to watch soap operas, or maybe because I had read so many novels, it seems to me that many of the plot lines of these types of entertainment are centered around misinformation.
Stories ranging from then soap opera "General Hospital" to one of Mark's favorite movies "White Christmas" center around someone hearing a part of a sentence and misunderstanding what was being said. Then they fill in the blanks and come to the wrong conclusion. This is great fun for fiction, but could cause problems in reality.
We told the girls that I had cancer and that I had to go into the hospital to have an operation. We explain that when I came home it would take weeks for me to heal, and that I would need their help with things like bringing me glasses of water and so on.
"Are you going to die?" My little Leah asked with tears in her eyes, Sam started to cry also.
"NO!" I said trying to sound convincing. "I am not going to die, but I will be real sick for about a month or so." I hugged them both and we try to answer all of their questions. The knowledge that I had cancer frightened them, yet they were actually relieved, because they knew something was going on and now they understood why I had been so sad.

And wait…

I called Diane and told her that my surgery had been rescheduled and asked if she can readjust the cooking schedule. She called me back to tell me that she was able to reschedule everyone but Ruth. My friend Ruth was the mother of one of Leah's friends. Ruth still wanted to cook for us on the thirteenth because she didn't want to loose her place in the cooking line-up. So she told Diane that she would bring over dinner so I could have a night off. Cool. So at 5:00pm on Friday the thirteenth my family receive our first meal from The Traci’s Friends Delivery Service, the meal was wonderful.