the aforementioned story by Ronni Lundy How I Spent Big Mons Birthday: At a bluegrass festival, of course. You may remember from a previous episode that Darling Dieta Duncan had provided me with a pass to the Brevard Mountain Music Festival yesterday featuring her unbelievably talented hubs, Stuart Duncan and Noam Pilkenny, plus a passel of other bands including The Seldom Scene and Steep Canyon Rangers with special guest, Sam Bush. In fact, Dieta came up with passes for me plus 3, but due to circumstance beyond anyones control none of the hoped for family/friends were able to take them. Driving across the mountain from Boone, where Id spent the night on a research mission, The Old Woman Who Owns My Bones was in a deep discussion with the Girl of My Heart about whether or not we, meaning me, wouldnt be wiser to go home and curl up with a book and CDs on this grey day instead. Luckily the old gal lost. And I decided that when I got to Will Call Id see if there were some Hopeful Happy Hippies camped outside the gate looking for extra tickets for this long sold-out show and give them my three just to return a little bit of the Great Grace thats marked so much of my life. I didnt see any initially, but when I asked the woman with The List at the table if it was okay for me to take my wristbands and find some, I heard a voice behind me say, Well buy them. Did you say you had three? I turned around and there was an impossibly tall, thin young guy in a short semi-mohawk with a camp chair slung over his shoulder and an eager look on his face. ill give them to you, I said. Just hang on, and went back to the col-de-rol in getting my own. When he offered to buy them again, I said no and started to explain how Id gone to festivals on a hope and a prayer myself, but he beat me to the punch. Im with my Mom and Dad, he said. We didnt buy tickets because Im in chemo and we didnt know if Id be able to come. He was tearing up. Me, too. I said, Oh my, you know what, Im a cancer survivor. He told me he had Stage 3, Lymphoma and I raised him Stage 4 Ovarian Metastasized in the Liver, and listen here, sweetheart, survivor now for 13 years. Miracles happen, I said. All the time. You remember that... His mom had come up by then and we were all a little weepy and hugging, even the woman with The List behind the table. And he was saying that I didnt know how great this was, these were his favorite bands and hed thought he might not get to see them... So I hugged around one more time and ducked out to give them some space and the time to get their wristbands. But I thought of something and turned around and went back. Whos your favorite favorite, I asked him, and yep, sure enough, he said, Sam Bush. I said, Did you know hes a cancer survivor, too? His eyes got huge. Youre kidding. Nppe, I said and wracked my old lady brain to try to remember how old Meghan was when we all loaded in the car and went to Nashville for Sams surgery. Over 30 years now, I said. Over. Thirty. Years. I saw him a couple of more times through the night, and every time wed laugh and hug because now hes was just dancing. I know how healing this music is, believe it ought to be part of everybodys therapy program. He introduced me to his beautiful, gentle-eyed fiancee at one point, and I saw his mom again, too, met his dad and they told me it had been a rough week (My support group and I called Chemo The Valley of the Shadow) and the music was its benediction. It seems strange to me to harp on my cancer survival, but I remember how desperately hopeless it felt when I got my own diagnosis right around this time 13 years ago. It came with an expected 2-year expiration date and no statistically significant rates of cure. But statistical significance is not the same thing as none and for whatever reason, I began to hear stories of survivors against odds as hard or harder than mine, and that became a piece of the healing. So, as I do every year around now, I share that story again. If you know someone who needs it, please share it top. Then take a little time for Howlin at the Moon.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 13:24:41 +0000
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