...Letting Go of Tumor...

(c) Robz Tan

We all have that one thing or two that we hoard.

Be it credit card receipts.
Old shoes we can't dispose.
Size 6 clothes reminding us how fit we used to be.
Or as trivial as dried petals from the first flowers we ever received.

Relate?
It's so me! (Who's the writer here?)


 "Sentimental Value" n. a form of disease I inherited from my grand mother.

It seems like everything inside our house has history.
Our old cabinet with dwindling locks is still hanging in our wall since it's the "first craft of your grand fathers".
The pages of the Noli Me Tangere book is still in the shelf, edges are melting when you lay your fingers on it but because "it was purchase from the first salary of your soldier grand father",
so Touch Me Not!

The lists go on and seemed endless.
Probably that's the reason why I grew up with strong attachment to the things of the past.
To what is classic.
To small things with great value.
And so letting go was quite not a norm in the house.

I remember my Lola Linda showing off the first safety pin used to the baby blanket of my late father.
And he was 30!
Gosh, that's how you spell LOYALTY to the Sentimental Value at home.

When we moved to our new home, it was only then that my grand mother has no choice but to leave everything behind.
Otherwise, she'll be bringing termites to our new house.
But that, after the nth time convincing and arguing and bargaining and quarreling.


The recent event in our lives brought me back to those times.

My Auntie was diagnose to have a multiple myoma. For years, she had live with it asymptomatic.
No pain. No bleeding. Nothing.
The tumor grew insidiously. Feeding from the healthy foods she is taking. From the vitamin supplements she religiously take everyday.
Until one day, she suffered from heavy bleeding unresponsive to conservative management.
She was scheduled for an urgent operation.

Being in the medical field, and having known pain in different forms, I know so well that she wasn't ready for anything.
It's easy for the rest of the family to say to proceed with the operation. To say that it's the best for the time being.
Because we are not the one who will go inside the OR theater. Not the one who will have the tummy opened.
Not the one who will lose a part that had been there her whole life.
The Sentimental Value disease in me has lost its luster.
It's painful, I know.
My Auntie will likely to suffer after the Anesthesia will subside.

But I know too well, too, that removing the tumor is the next best thing to LOYALTY.


Letting Go.

What an analogy there is to compare it to tumor.
Pardon, but your blogger here is undeniably loyal to her profession =)

There's a great anguish to have something or someone removed from us.
Especially if you have nurtured it well with all your LOVE, TRUST, TIME and
COMMITMENT.
We deny the fact and the thought of losing what we valued the most.
The Sentimental Value thing.

But if it's causing us to bleed from losing our own self-respect, self-worth and faith,
painful as it is, that "tumor" has to be dissected, regardless.

Pain is temporary.
No one takes everything in this life.
If you have given your best shots, if there's nothing more you have to give,
take the mat of courage from where you fell, forgive yourself and stand trembling and aching.
It's alright.
No one gets out of this life unscathed.

That scar left by something or someone will always be a reminder that once in your life, you stand for something worth enduring.

And worth dissecting!


What's your tumor?

Have you decided to schedule your operation?

The Hands of Mercy of  the Great Surgeon is waiting.

P.S.
Blogging knows no vacation! =)