Be Brave Just A Little While Longer

It was one of those days … the kind that spirals like a comic farce. 

I could feel the Spring sun on my face as I stood on the driveway, turned back to the house, wondering if I should walk back to the house. 

“You have to come out, Chase! We need to go!”

I could hear his voice yelling from behind the front screen door. “Why do we have to do this anyway? I don’t want to get in the car! This is stupid!”

You see, Chase is having a full brain and spine MRI on Monday; a test that requires sedation for him…which requires a COVID-19 test. And so, in spite of two diagnosed cancers, endless surgeries, procedures, and more medical drama then I can hardly wrap my head around, he holed himself up in the house with angry words and little growls because he didn’t want to get his nose swabbed at the outpatient facility. 

And isn’t it interesting how the little things feel really big when life is hard and hurtful?

“Chase, we need to go!”

“I’m not wearing clothes.”

“It’s okay to go in your pajamas. It’s a drive through test. But they need to be clean pajamas, okay?”

Growls. “What is it with you and clean clothes?”

Another breath on the drive, the spring air cold and clean in my lungs.

“I don’t have any shoes!”

“Where are your gym shoes?”

“I don’t know!”

Minutes slipping by in the fight. We will be late for our test time slot now.

Deep breaths.

“Just slip on your slides then!”

“I don’t know where those are either!”

“Did you check the shoe zone?”

“MOM!” Another growl.

I can feel my heart pounding and I want to lose what little patience I have, but I know he’s nervous.

And then he stomped out of the house, mismatched (albeit clean) pajamas on his body, his winter coat over his shoulders, and his younger brother’s gray canvas shoes on his smaller feet, which made an alarming clomp-clomp sound when he walked. 

Under his arm is tucked his favorite tie-dye stuffed animal – a toy he named “Darcy”, after his sister. 

I look at him stomping towards me. If this were a different day and tempers weren’t so tight and patience thin, I’d laugh and ask him where his mother was. 

But not today. 

He worries the whole way to the outpatient facility and I spend much of the drive, one hand on the wheel, the other stretched long to where he sits behind the drivers’ seat, holding his cold little hand in mine. 

“I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“I can’t be brave when I’m scared. I don’t think I can be brave anymore.”

“You’re wrong, my sweet boy. Brave means you’re scared and do it anyway. Doing something you don’t want to do makes you the bravest of the brave.”

We arrive. 

It’s not a drive through test anymore. So, we walk in; Chase, me, our masks, our worries, and stuffed Darcy. We look as bedraggled as we feel.

And of course the test is short and sweet and not so very terrible at all – all things considered. 

The nurse, in all her layers of protective visor and mask and gown and gloves, backs away and says “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

And Chase, sitting on my lap, lowers his head like his still-lowered mask and bursts into tears. 

Not angry tears or scared ones, but true, sad, tears – the kind that make you sob quietly while drops roll down your face. The brokenhearted kind of tears.

The nurse looked at me, and I looked at her, and then I hugged him close, trying to kiss his head before I remembered my own mask, and we let him cry. 

It was only a moment, but I realized that Chase needed that moment. Because he wasn’t angry, and he wasn’t scared anymore. The tears were a pure release of emotion. 

He cried because things weren’t as they should be. 

It wasn’t the test. 

It was what the test stood for. 

One more thing. 

One more reminder. 

He is broken.

We are all broken.

It is okay to grieve that reality – to acknowledge that the tears aren’t always about what is happening in the moment, but for all the happenings in all the rooms – the heart cry that all is not right in this place and it won’t be right for a while yet, even though we know Who ultimately wins. 

The clinic room was quiet and then we dried the tears and it was done and we left, Chase, me, our masks, and stuffed Darcy.

“I was brave after all.” His bruised little hand slipped into mine as we walked out the doors.

“I think you can be brave just a little while longer, sweet boy.”

Moment by moment.

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On Monday, April 19th, we put a pause on thyroid cancer concerns for a moment as Chase will undergo his brain and spine MRI to continue monitoring the damages and threats related to his brain cancer. Thank you so much for keeping him in your prayers.

This post is specially dedicated to all those who are being brave just a little longer, and most especially to Angel, Katie, Logan, and Patrick