MY FAMILY HISTORY OF BREAST CANCER

I've thought long and hard about how to write this post without disrespecting the memory of an aunt I loved very much. She was my mom's only sister, at least her only sister who survived to adulthood. My Aunt Bonnie was in her late teens when my mom was born, so she was more like a mother figure to her. Mom was five when their father died and their mother went to work as a nanny, so my aunt and uncle took Mom into their home and raised her. They went on to have four sons who were like little brothers to my mom.

My brother and I to the left,  Aunt Bonnie with hands on knees looking in our direction,  1958.

My aunt doted on her baby sister and later she doted on me, especially in the first three years of my life when we lived in New York and Maine. After that I didn't see Aunt Bonnie often because the Air Force stationed my dad in Germany and in Texas but she wrote letters to me regularly from the time I could read. She was a great story teller, regaling me with funny stories about moose sightings in her yard and hair coloring mishaps. We were pen pals throughout my childhood.

Aunt Bonnie continued to write to me after I grew up and also wrote wonderful  letters to my children. She made beautiful unique quilts for each of my three children. She and my mom stayed in touch by letter and phone calls between Maine and Texas.

That's why her death was such a painful shock to my mom, her only sister. My aunt and uncle were in their seventies then and one of their sons and his wife had come to live in their big house with them to help take care of the home and property. It was a huge historic old house with one wing that was a like a complete separate residence.

The family home in about 2007

Aunt Bonnie was very sharp, not a trace of dementia. She had still been calling Mom fairly regularly, but one day her family called to tell my mom that her sister had just been diagnosed with advanced, metastasized breast cancer and that there was nothing that could be done. Even if there was, she refused to stay in the hospital or consent to any in-home or hospice care.

My cousin and his wife said that they had suspected for some time that Aunt Bonnie was living with a lot of pain, but she wouldn't answer questions about it or let anyone help her with anything that involved getting even partially undressed. Finally one day, she just passed out at home and her family called an ambulance, which took her to the hospital. That's the first anyone in her family knew about her breast cancer.

My mother never talked to her sister again. Mom quickly booked a flight to Maine, but while she was in the air, Aunt Bonnie died. Mom was heartbroken, deeply hurt to think back over recent phone conversations and the lengths her sister must have gone to to conceal her physical and emotional pain. She felt so shut out, so robbed of the opportunity to have any meaningful conversations with her sister in her last days on earth or to pray for her.

Aunt Bonnie was a wonderful woman in so many ways. I can't judge her motives for handling her illness the way she did. My mom did tell me that Aunt Bonnie always wanted to control her own fate and that made her reluctant to go to doctors or to let anyone help her with anything.

Since my aunt was my only relative who had breast cancer, I've thought a lot about her in the past few days. She lived in a house with three people who loved her. She talked on the phone regularly with her only sister. But none of them were able to help, serve, or comfort her in her last days or even to say good-bye.

The fact that one maternal aunt had breast cancer was probably not a significant risk factor for me, but I wish I knew what kind of breast cancer she had and how long she had it before she died. More than that, I wonder why she dealt with it the way she did. I plan to take advantage of the medical care that is available to me and I want my medical information and my story to be available to my daughters, nieces and granddaughters if any of them would ever benefit from it.

Like my aunt, I am blessed with a loving husband and family, but I can't imagine facing this experience without them. We'll go through this together and with God.