Two years ago I found out that my Aunt had cancer. Everyone in my family was devastated, including me. Being the optimistic person that I am, I decided that if I took care of her and hoped enough she would get better. I soon learned that disappointment is inevitable and hoping isn’t always enough. 

My parents told me that my Aunt Lilian had cancer right before we left the house to meet her for lunch. I was shocked. I cried the whole way to lunch in hopes that I would be able to pull it together before we got to the restaurant, but in order for that to happen I had to cry and get it all out. I managed to pull it together enough to walk into the resturaunt.  My Aunt was already there. As we walked in all we could see was her back, so I was doing okay, until my mom called her name and she turned around. I saw her face, smiling and  I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I ran to her and cried. She looked so happy, normal, you couldn’t even tell she was sick. All I could think about was how much she helped people and how kind she was. She didn’t deserve to have to deal with something like this. All my memories I had with her flashed through my mind, there weren’t enough, she had to have longer. As I cried into her she was saying soothing words and trying to comfort me. I felt so guilty that I was the one crying and she was the one comforting me when I  wasn’t the one who had cancer. I eventually calmed myself down and realized my brother was also crying. I comforted him as I saw my older cousins walking in. I looked to them for support because I hadn’t seen them cry since they were very young but they couldn’t hold in their emotions any more than I could. I don’t know why I thought they wouldn’t cry, it was a sad moment and it was their aunt too. They had a right to cry, we all did. We all held it in and acted as if we were having a normal lunch. The lunch was so normal that I started to have hope that she would get better and everything would go back to normal, but what I hadn’t realized was that when something breaks, you can never put it back together the same way.

Over the course of those two years my Aunt fought cancer and won a few battles. I was hopeful and that was a bad choice on my part because when you get your hopes up too high, you tend to be let down. Right after Christmas last year, everything started going downhill. I spent as much time as I could with my Aunt.  I had brunch with her and I went to church with her and I started to get used to the idea that things get worse before they get better. But then my mom moved into her house. She said it was temporary but I knew why. My Aunt wasn’t getting better. And yet I  still hoped. Then my family from out of town came to stay. I hoped harder. My Aunt literally couldn’t get out of bed. No matter what happened I told myself that I had to hope, so I did.

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015. My hope shattered. My cousins and I went to an early mass and the parents were going after us so someone would always be in the house with my Aunt Lilian so she wouldn’t be alone. By then she was in hospice and had become unresponsive. I was in the house with my 4 older girl cousins, 1 older boy cousin, my grandma and my Aunt Lilian. My cousins (Mark and Valerie) and grandma were upstairs. Valerie and Mark both moved from my Aunt’s room for a minute. From downstairs my 3 cousins and I could here my grandma bawling. My cousin Andrea raced upstairs, but we knew what had happened. She was gone. I was probably crying the hardest.  Not because I was the closest one to my Aunt, I mean we were close, but she never played favorites, I  was crying because it wasn’t fair. She was such a good person, she wasn’t very old either. She should have had more years, but cancer took it away. My hope was gone, my Aunt was gone, I didn’t know what to do. I  barely noticed all the parents walk in. They just went upstairs. We all went there and saw that my grandma was laying on the bed next to my Aunt Lilian praying in a such a sad voice that it broke my heart. Everyone was crying and the parents were trying to comfort her. Then they had to make a bunch of calls to the police and to the hospital. All the kids sat in the living room, not wishing to see our Aunt rolled away in a bag or a gurney. All of us eventually fell asleep, because it is exhausting to cry and be so upset.  When I woke up I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to do anything. I was just there. I felt nothing, no hope, no sadness, nothing. In movies and books they lie, when your heart breaks it doesn’t hurt, maybe at first but when your heart breaks, you don’t feel anything because your heart is so broken that it is unable to feel.

A little hope is effective. A lot of hope can be damaging. When you hope too much, you expect more. High expectations are usually followed by a great amount of disappointment. Sometimes you have to hope in order to keep going. Sometimes hope is needed to feel better. And sometimes hope is the reason you’re broken.