Amanda

At the beginning of Maura's cancer journey, a young friend came back into our lives. She had mostly known my older girls through church and school, but life had taken them all in different directions and they lost touch. Amanda was only a few years older than Maura, married, very wise, and she had been dealing with cancer for a couple of years, so she spoke with authority. At one point she had been on death's door and subsequently--amazingly--had gone into remission. When she became Maura's friend and mentor, she was in remission for the fourth time.
Last year, she would bring black bean burritos each week and sit in the living room with us. Maura wouldn't say a word. Amanda never seemed uncomfortable with silence. Slowly, Maura began to open up to her; Amanda responded with advice or related a story about her own experience. She began to teach Maura some life skills that were especially valuable to someone in the cancer maze. From Amanda, Maura learned to speak her mind at the doctor's office, to stick up for herself when a health care worker neglected to treat her the way she wanted to be treated, not to be embarrassed about getting her way at the hospital , even if an employee (or friend or family member) was inconvenienced. She learned not to let cancer define her life. She learned to trust God, regardless of the outcome.
She gave Maura a box of Bible verses that had once helped her and a bag of all her caps and scarves from when, she. too, had no hair.
One day last year Amanda told Maura that she would take her cancer for her, if that were possible, because Amanda has a gold heart and she loved Maura that much.
A couple of months ago, Amanda's cancer returned, and she began chemo treatments for the fifth time. Even so, she never left Maura during the last couple of weeks, camping out on our floor while Maura was in hospice care. Maura had asked her to stay. I don't think we could have dragged Amanda away had we wanted to. But we didn't want to. Amanda was a constant presence at the house and at the hospital, showing up at Maura's bedside at 4:00 in the morning when I needed a nap, quietly finding her place in our home. A few days before Maura died, Amanda told Maura again that she would take her cancer if she could. This time Maura responded. "I wouldn't let you. You are going to get well and live and get pregnant and have a baby. And you are going to bring that baby over to our house so my mom can rock her." And I think they both cried. I did, at least, when I heard the story.
A couple of days after Maura's memorial service, Amanda got her latest CT-scan results after fewer than half the recommended chemo cycles. Clear. Cancer is gone.