I hope you had a good Easter in spite of the reality that this was a different Resurrection Day than any of have experienced before. Isaac came home on Saturday afternoon, and we spent some meaningful time together on Saturday afternoon and Sunday.  We prepared a nice breakfast yesterday, and watched the Calvary Service together.  We enjoyed the afternoon with a walk and watched Saving Private Ryan last night -- a hard movie I know, but nevertheless one filled with hope amidst impossible odds. It is a movie that I've seen several times but Isaac had never seen.  We had watched the movie 1917 recently, and since Isaac liked this movie, I thought he would find Saving Private Ryan meaningful also. Yesterday was a difficult day filled with many memories of Easter's past, and throughout the day, I shed frequent tears.  A surprise gift for the day was a video that a number of friends put together wishing Hannah, Isaac, and me a good Easter and sharing favorite memories of Brenda.  It is a treasure that I will watch many times in the future as a source of solace. Isaac and I reflected throughout the day about Easter last year when Brenda had gotten out of the hospital the previous Wednesday. In spite of being only 9 days out of surgery, and with the help of a host of friends, we were able to hold our traditional Easter lunch last year to which well over 50 students/friends came.  

This is last post of updates chronicling Brenda's cancer journey before I started posting on Caring Bridge. I will continue to post occasionally even though I have filled in these gaps.  Many of you have mentioned the possibility of my eventually turning this series of blogs into a book. I did reach out last week to a friend who has followed the blogs and is an Editor/Author Relations Coordinator with a significant publisher.  I will be continuing conversations and see where this leads.  In the meantime, I have a few other writing projects to which I am already committed.  Please know that your encouragement about the meaningfulness of these blog posts has been an encouragement to me even as the process has been helpful to me personally.  

Friday, April 12th

I spent the night on the fold down bed in Brenda’s room as I would end up doing for the next week.  Amy and Isaac had come to Dallas after school late on Thursday afternoon, and they drove back to Waco late that night.  Brenda rested well although she was hungry and anxious.  We awoke early to be present when the doctor came by, and since we had learned so much the previous evening, there was no news.  Still not sure exactly the surgery time, we waited.  Up in the morning, Isaac and Amy, our pastor, Mary Alice, and our close friend, Sherry Dehay came up to be with us.  Around the middle of the afternoon, they came to get Brenda for surgery, and we went down stairs to the surgery waiting area.  Shortly afterward, they allowed Isaac and me to speak to Brenda before the surgery began.  They surgery took several hours, and ended around 5:00.  We were notified that Brenda’s surgery was finished, and we went to a small waiting room to wait for the doctor. He came in shortly and shared with us the news that Brenda’s surgery had gone well; however, her prognosis was not good.  Her cancer had metastasized in her liver, the cancer had invaded the main vein through the pancreas, and surgery on the tumor would not be possible then, or in the future. He projected that Brenda would have 6-9 months to live.  The news was devastating for us, yet we received it in-stride. I called Hannah first and then Brenda’s family, and we started the process of flying Hannah to Dallas.  Eventually, we were able to get her an early morning flight from Dallas on Saturday morning, and she would be at the hospital around 10:00 the following day.  Within a short time, we were allowed to be with Brenda in recovery and wait for her to awake.  We waited there with her for several hours, and finally she was transferred to a room.  Eventually, much later in the evening, Amy and Isaac went to her brother’s house to spend the night, and Mary Alice and Sherry drove back to Waco – throughout the day a number of Dallas area friends dropped by to support us as well.  Once we were finally alone and Brenda had become more alert, she looked up at me and said, "I know because you have not said anything the news is not good."  I then shared the horrible news with her, and I sat on the bed beside her for a long time as we both cried.  Words failed us then as they fail me even now.