The card has beautiful colors and on it it says: "Cancer is a villain who doesn't play fair but it can't dim your spirit and it can't silence prayer."
This verse is especially true in her case as she is what they call a 'downwinder' in Utah who remembers going outside with her husband to watch the explosions way in the distance from the Nevada test sites. She lives in an area which must have been especially exposed to fallout as she told my sister a number of people right there in her neighborhood alone are fighting cancer. My sister Ann is a downwinder who fought breast cancer, eventually getting both chemo and radium. My sister LaRae was also a downwinder who not only lived in southern Utah during the tests and subsequent fallout but worked at the Nevada test site, as did my former brother-in-law from the same town Rolain was from. LaRae died of ovarian cancer when she was 51 and he died in his 50's of bladder cancer. Downwinder is a word that strikes fear in the heart of people from southern Utah who haven't had cancer yet wondering if it is going to strike.
Not that others do not get cancer. I was reading in the last Sun Magazine an interview with one who has studied the areas where cancer strikes the most and says that it is known there are certain places exposed to environmental factors that experience cancer clusters just like the downwinders.
For some reason there is some evidence to support the fact that breast feeding your children protects you some from breast cancer. I can see why that might be so as it is probably a good thing for the breast to function as nature designed it to do. My daughter is an expert on such statistics as she is a big supporter of breast feeding.
Rolain's photo was featured on our family site for a number of days during her second hospitalization and surgery so relatives could think about her and pray for her. Her lumpectomy pathology revealed they had not gotten all the cancer, so breast removal followed. Lymph nodes were removed to be tested. She is recovering and awaiting results. My sister Ann said she is determined to get both 'boobs' back to looking normal, so she was planning a breast implant. Her spirit seemed strong according to both my sisters Ann and Margie who visited her in the hospital. Other friends and family have rallied with visits and calls.
Rolain was a popular beauty operator for years in her hometown. She says she will always be grateful to my sister LaRae who encouraged her to go to cosmetology school after her divorce. She proved to be a the hardest worker hardly anybody has seen and one of the best talkers. That's a big asset in a hair dresser.
If I call her on the phone it is not uncommon for us to talk two hours. I have got an online phone so this does not cost me any extra since I would be hard put to get anybody else to talk to me on the phone for 2 hours! We know so many of the same people, since she is from my ex husband's hometown.
In fact she knew the parents well of the guy I call Red Barfield in my previous entry. I sent her a dvd of the reading of this play. I don't know if she enjoyed it or was horrified, but she knows the outlaws I wrote about. I will never forget her telling me when I first mentioned I was interested in Red, "Oh, he is a tarrible fellow. He was involved in the black market in the service and they say he sent home everyone of his pay checks to his dad to keep for him." I was shocked. Have you ever heard of a young guy going in the service where they don't make much money anyway and not spending a dime of it? What was he living on? Well, I did find out. It was quite a story. Red did not like the service. He said, "I could not run and jump." It seems he barely escaped incarceration and was eventually discharged I supposed for 'failure to adjust.'
Rolain and I spent a lot of hours wondering what goes wrong to produce an outlaw pure and simple. When I read that play again the other night I was shocked at how savage the characters now seemed. Rolain married a guy who was considered to be an outlaw from my hometown. His father was killed in a hunting accident when he was just a kid and his poor hard working mother was unable to keep him and his older brother strictly on the straight and narrow. Rolain had 6 kids by him before she reached the age of 28, two of whom died, one after a month and one at 6 months. With 4 kids to raise by herself, she was forced to get a divorce from him because he was a 'stepper'. She talked of the babies who died and after she got cancer she said that she had lived a full life and was ready to join these two children in heaven where she knew they would be waiting for her.
The night of her last surgery I experienced a spirit visit from one of these children. I was half dozing during my evening meditation, sitting in my recliner in the living room. A knock came on the door. As though in a dream I got up and answered it. A younger vigorous looking woman was standing there. She was wearing the kind of clothes you wear out in the snow in Phoenix where it never snows. I was frightened when she appeared in darkness at first because my hallway is always well lighted. Later I figured this was to show me she was a spirit because she then faded. I knew she was a spirit, but who? By process of elimination I decided it was Rolain's daughter, Ruth Lane, who died in infancy. She had come on the night her mother was undergoing her worst ordeal in her fight against cancer, removal of the breast. Rolain had just described to me the record snowfall in her back yard, so I figured Ruth Lane had been spending considerable time with her mother in Escalante, thus the clothes she was wearing. I feel that she appeared to me so I could tell Rolain that she was watching over her and would never be far from her during her continuing treatment
When a spirit manifests facts will be revealed in these ways about who it is and what the message is. I think this is why so many people are unable to believe in spirit manifestations. They do not realize they will appear like people do in a dream and will act out their messages in symbols you must study to interpret. I started studying my dreams many years ago as I saw my mother do.
Also you have to remember that dreams can only alter reality in extreme cases. I believe that I have been able to alter a future event I foresaw through a dream only slightly, but sometimes that is the difference between life and death. If you receive a warning dream, the intent will be for you to do something that will keep the worst tragedy from happening. The events in the dream will still happen but perhaps not with as severe a result if you are able to warn people and they heed your warning. That has happened a very few times in my life. Something terrible still happened to them, but not death, the worst.
So I can't wait to tell Rolain about the visit from this young woman. I believe prayers really are answered and that many are praying on Rolain's behalf. She has grand children and great grandchildren who would miss her a lot if she left the world now. I hope to see her live more years for them, but I know her daughter will be there to greet her in heaven as she said and wants her to know that she will.
2 comments:
I keep wanting to squash those little birds flying across that
counter of yours...thinking they are fruit flies on the screen or something. How do you tell if someone shows up from Escalante on a blog?
I think you are getting out everything you think to the world without too much trouble on your blog. It tells all! A book might put things into a form and be around longer. Good entry about cancer victims.
OOOH I Sooo agree about the book (HINT-Hint).
My prayers sent for your dear friend.
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