Day 149.

So I've been sick the last two days (my parents totally called that last time I talked to them on skype). We think it's a mixture of bad meat / dirty water, but now that I've taken a six hour nap, consumed nothing but chicken noodle soup, and my host mom magically produced some mystery medicine, I feel much better.

In the mean time I've revamped my blog (I did all the CSS myself -- tell me what you think!) and whipped out some VERY short video updates that needed to get done for the Lopez family. Feel free to head over to my youtube channel and check them out.

Five minutes ago I finished "My Sister's Keeper" (thank you Aunt Kristi!) with my new reading light (thank you Grandma!) and thoroughly enjoying it. Obviously it's kind of a popular book, but I'm very impressed with Jodi Picoult's writing style.

The story is about cancer; it uses medical terms that don't fit into my mouth. It highlights a loss that I've experienced twice over but haven't come to comprehend.

In the few months leading up to my departure, both of my mother's parents passed away because of that ugly six-lettered word. My grandfather died at nearly the same instant my "I Have a Dream Today" short film was being shown in the Seattle Cinerama, nearly a thousand watching faces lit by the works of future filmmakers. My grandmother died two months later, less than two weeks after my 18th birthday and the standing ovation I received for my high school graduation speech.

Although I am now a legal adult, I still have a fully functioning imagination. It's amazing how easily I can conjure a whole story line in my head, how in my daydreams I can laugh with kids at Harry Potter Camp, how I can taste the inside jokes my future friends and I will share at college.

That's what I've done since Gram and Granddad died. I've always seen myself bursting through the door at the top of their hill, stooping to wrap my long arms around my stout mother's mother, dodging Granddad's knobby nose and the protruding tufts of white hair tucked inside. They'd ask me about my flight from Costa Rica and I would have to repeat myself three, maybe four times. We'd munch on Christmas Candy Corn that Gram purchased from the Rainbow Store at the end of April, the "Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack filling in the generation gap. They'd both trounce me in Upwords, but I would come away smarter because of it.

We wouldn't need to touch that smoldering R.O.U.S. that is politics because I've learned here that arguments are a terrible excuse for a selfish waste of energy. Maybe we'd go get Ivar's. Maybe we'd go to Breakfast Club the next day. I'd tell Gram about the matching tattoos Ali and I drawing up in our mother's honor, and that if it wasn't for their mother, none of us would exist. Granddad would scold at that, but deep down he'd be jealous.

Gram would finally open up to me about the brother she lost in WWII and I would struggle to swallow the thought of losing Luke or Henry. She'd tell me stories about Great-Grandmother and her art and her style.

We'd talk about how my sports teams did without me this year and how much my cousin Jensen knows. They'd remind me about being a good Presbyterian and I'd smile. I'd recite "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in" by e.e. cummings and memories would swell in my grandfather's eyes.

But that's in my mind. I can write it in my diary come May 4, but it would be a false memory. If I ever have the pleasure of opening their door, stepping into that sanctuary home, it will be empty of the TV dinner trays, the floral chair that beckoned fort-building, the wicker penguin basket we all wore on our heads, and the stack of "Where's Waldo?" books that every grandchild has memorized.

They won't get to hold my college diploma or cross-examine my first boyfriend. They didn't get to see Luke play tuba at homecoming or laugh at Henry's latest crazy computer creation. My youngest cousin Harry will most-likely only hold faded memories of them, torn around the edges with time.

With the exception of a very powerful prayer in Lorena's arms and saying good-bye to my family for a second time, I haven't cried in the nearly five months I've been here. There hasn't been a day where I've missed some thing or some one so much it brings me to tears.

I'm crying now. I miss them.

There is a ruckus downstairs, caused by that word again: cancer. Except this time it's accompanied by familial laughter, shared dishes, and sore stomachs from too much of both. My host mom's brother has been battling pancreas cancer since I arrived and twice a week, she and her siblings (she is the youngest of five, just like my Valerie) gather and spend their remaining moments around a common table. They pray, they cry, and they live. After every meeting she reminds me that God gives us blessings in the strangest of packages. He had to give her brother cancer in order for her family to start talking to each other again.

--Hannah

PS Literally seconds before I was about to hit "Publish Post" I recieved a Skype Call from my cousin Ali. She recently told me that she talks about Gram to many people. I think I'm going to start doing that too.