Remission Rocks.

There's a girl I know.

She doesn't know me, but I remember meeting her some time in college. She was a friend of a friend. An absolutely gorgeous blond-haired, blue-eyed Southern belle.

Several months ago, I saw a comment from her on our mutual friend's Facebook page. I recognized her name, so I clicked on it.

Her profile was a mess of well wishes. Statuses about chemo, doctors' prognoses, prayers. I couldn't believe it. She had leukemia.

Twenty-five years old and she had leukemia. And there I was, that same day, worrying about my low paycheck and wondering if we were going to find a house to move into before we left for vacation. I was sitting on my couch, mindlessly checking a ridiculously meaningless website.

And she had leukemia.

I was shocked. From the looks of it, she was going through the works - intense chemo. I thought about her on random days after that. What she must be going through, the pain her husband must be feeling, how she probably couldn't even enjoy a good bowl of ice cream without feeling nauseated.

I've watched enough people go through chemo to know what it does to your body. What it does to your soul. It kills you softly, sometimes even worse than the cancer.

Today, I thought about her again, just like I had on all those random days. But this time, I thought I'd see how she was doing instead of just wondering. I got on Facebook, searched her name, and while the hourglass spun, I got scared that maybe I'd find a page lost in space. One like Brooke's - one that lingers idle after someone dies.

Page loaded.

Status - "remission rocks. :)"

It is amazing how people you hardly know, people who couldn't pick you out in a crowd, can have such an impact on your life.

There are other people like that - other people who have taken my breathe away, influenced me without even knowing it. I bet they have no idea what they've done.

Bloom for you.

When I first moved to Guam, Brent introduced me to a plant he bought at the Micronesia Craft Fair. It was some fancy schmancy succulent garden, planted ever so systematically in the holes of a large piece of wood, then cemented into a clay pot.

Sounds ridiculous, but it really was beautiful.

He named it our Tree of Love, and it quickly became our little joke. If you didn't water the Tree of Love one day, well, you can imagine the scrutiny.

No matter how much both of us wanted to keep the little guy alive, we sort of just lost interest. It's incredibly difficult to water a piece of bark with no soil. So, needless to say, the Tree of Love soon met its demise.

Before he left for deployment, we decided to invest in another, soil friendly Tree of Love, which we aptly named No. 2.

It was a plumeria, and if you know anything about plumerias, or most any other plants, you would know they love sunlight. And water. Imagine that.

My grandmother once told me that a good Southern woman knows her flowers. And grandma was right. We do know them, but that damn sure doesn't mean we all know how to grow them - or keep them alive for that matter.

Long story short, Tree of Love No. 2 quickly became a tall green stick in a pot of soil. The leaves fell off, the beautiful white bloom disintegrated, and I just wasn't in the mood for resuscitation.

I let it go for months. Every once in awhile, I'd pour some water in the pot, but Tree of Love No. 2 just would not reason with me. He refused to grow, and for awhile, I came to the conclusion he just wanted to be left alone to die.

About a month ago, when I put up the Christmas tree, Tree of Love No. 2 became more of a nuisance than a project. He was in the way of my prime holiday decoration. And I just wasn't going to have a dead piece of wood in a red pot messing up my Christmas spirit. "Well hell," I thought. "Maybe I'll just stick him on the back porch and see what happens."

He took instantly to the rain and sun. It turns out plants like that sort of thing.

I've been keeping an eye on him all these weeks, even pulling him inside when the rain or wind got to be too much. I left him by the bedroom window though, so he wouldn't be too far from his Vitamin D.

Eventually, leaves started to sprout. And today, when I came home from work, I looked out the window and gasped. Our Tree of Love No. 2 is in bloom again. It's a tiny bloom, just one lonely little white flower, but it's definitely there.

Funny how after 6 months of Brent and I being apart, our little friend decides to show his true colors just before my baby comes home. They say everything happens for a reason, and all that jazz.

I never thought a stick in a pot would remind me of that.

Beyond.

I had a friend that used to say that a lot. That he was beyond. He's French, so I always thought it was just some phrase that had gotten lost in translation.

How are you doing?, you'd say.
Oh, I'm just beyond, his reply.

Sometimes he'd elaborate. Beyond this or beyond that. I never knew what that meant until now. Turns out I was right. It is something lost in translation - but not how you think.

Last night I rang in the New Year with a group of friends. We bar hopped, I saw a few people I hadn't seen in awhile, and no matter where we went, it never failed. I bet you're excited about getting your man back soon, huh?

Everywhere I went, someone asked me about him. Or brought it up when I'd look at my watch to check the time. Or the few times in the night that I phased out and seemed to just be staring into space.

Beyond.

That's all I could think. I'm so beyond excited. Beyond being happy. Beyond feeling, really. Love, right now, is just pain to me. There is joy, of course, but with every joy there's hurt. I can't physically share anything with him right now. I can't touch him. I can't be touched. I can't look in his eyes. Or explain to him with mine how horrible or beautiful my days are.

Being alone and in love is so beyond what anyone can ever know. Separation is inexplicable. It seems like sometimes I'm the only one that does know. The only person who knows how tragic this has been.

Right now, there is no counting down. It's beyond that. It's beyond watching the calendar or trying to figure out how many minutes have to pass before I can see him again. It's like being lost in space.

I just want him home. I want to feel like I'm not some zombie just going through the motions. I want to feel like my days are about more than just staying busy. I want to feel like everything I could ever want is within my grasp again. Not beyond my control.