the connection of sisters

Woke up Friday morning coming out of a dream. If that's really what you could call it. In this world I found myself pregnant and with cancer and thus, faced with probably the worst worst-case scenario I could contemplate.

To terminate and start chemo, or forgo treatment knowing that I most likely would not survive much beyond the birth. Do I save myself, or condemn this child to the greatest pain I have ever known?

I awoke before I decided, in tears. As I watched the clouds move across the bay from my bed, my mind drifted and I was reminded of a fact that I try to forget. Follow me if you will, but know that the road is twisted, and the path slippery.

My mother's mother died when I was nine months old, while my mom was less than three months pregnant with my sister. It made me think of what it would be like to be that little embryo, developing in an amniotic fluid of grief.

Scientists are starting to believe that emotions are no more than hormones sending synapses firing signaling the body to move a certain way. Think about it. Why do we frown when are sad or cry when we are distressed? It's universal. If you show a group of people photos of people displaying different emotions, they will identify them all the same -- no matter where they come from.

Hormones and firing synapses, messages to your brain, signals to your muscles - that's all feeling are. Follow my thoughts, but hold on for I fear where they lead....

Think then back to this developing living being and the moment that the body she was growing in felt that pain. At the instant those hormones flowed and synapses began to fire. Sharing that body she learned what that meant. She knew that loss before she even understood the concept of mother.

Maybe for that she deserves to be angry at the world. It certainly was an unlucky draw. An unfortunate foundation, with such a grief permanently embedded in her core - laced into the fabric of her being.

It makes sense somehow. It's more than that of course. So much more. But maybe this is a bigger part than anyone will admit.

And as I started to understand, I started to forgive her all the more. The clouds moved off the bay and revealed the light of the sun. And then a dread came over me, like she was gone. No more of this earth.

My heart sank. I don't know what I would do if such a phone call came or worse. It's terrible, but at least this time I am not next of kin. I am not ready to go through that again. Not ready to know what that means.

Of course, I could be wrong. It is just this feeling I have. Synapes firing in a bath of hormones. Nothing more.