Cancer in Iowa: Remembering those we’ve lost amid our joy

Iowa Starting Line editor reflects on the loss of her mom to cancer as her brother’s family welcomes a new baby.

In Iowa Starting Line’s newsletter, I cover a lot of tough topics, including loss and grief (normalize it, right?), so I also wanted to take time to share my joy: Last month, my brother and his wife had a child: my new nephew!

The new parents are exhausted, but think he looks just like my brother as a baby. If you’d like to help us compare, a slightly older version of my brother is below.

I grabbed this photo from my late mom’s Facebook feed; she’d like to post old photos of us on our birthdays or randomly, and (when she tagged us) they still show up in Facebook Memories.

We lost Mom to surprise late-stage lung cancer in 2017. Not having Mom around for the birth of his child—her first grandchild—was tough on my brother. Even amid joy, grief is still there, worming its way into the could-have-beens and should-have-beens of momentous occasions like this.

I’m sure it will always have a hold on our family like that. And I suspect many Iowa families who have lost loved ones to cancer have similar stories.

We’re collecting those stories as part of our Cancer in Iowa series. If you’d like to share yours, I invite you to submit it here.

Mom may not have been at the birth of her grandchild physically, but I like to think she was, and is, very much there in other ways. I have felt her presence deep in the throes of my own grief. I was taught, and have come to believe myself, that our ancestors watch us—even guide us, if we’re open to that—and when I remember that, I have less anxiety and more confidence about my decisions and my future. They’ve got me through it all, just behind that curtain.

Life is a hell of a journey for us all. I’m just glad I’m still around for the joy, too.

This originally appeared in the Iowa Starting Line newsletter. Subscribe here for free.