Kori and her daughter (part 2 of 3)

That was the last walk Kori took with her daughter down Cimarron Avenue. Now, Mrs. Ginger brings the snicker doodles to their house. Other friends knock on the door, twist the red doorknob and bring in DVDs, flowers and puzzles for Kori’s daughter to arrange while the adults speak in hushed voices.

The cute, little house wasn’t always this way. People never used to enter with worried looks on their faces, tiptoeing around with full casserole dishes, holding their breaths like if they breathed too deeply or loudly, the cancer would enter them.

No, it wasn’t like that at all. Kori and her daughter used to dress up in boas and old hats, and Kori would sing along to the Supremes, while her daughter clapped her hands and giggled. It was during one such rendition, Kori singing into a wooden spoon, that the phone rang in the kitchen.

The music still playing in the background, Kori’s daughter’s legs dangling off the couch, kicking to the beat, Kori was holding the phone with one hand and the wooden spoon in another. The test results were in; they needed to see her immediately.

Looking back, Kori remembers that moment like it were frozen in time. She held a truth that hadn’t touched her daughter yet, but would move in very quickly. And it did. After that, it was a flurry of more tests, second opinions, phone calls, tears, brave faces and everyday tasks like making lunch and paying bills. Her battles with the insurance company reached levels approaching the battle that raged in her body.

For a while, Kori could only glance in a mirror briefly, before her eyes would sweep downward to confirm her flat chest. Evidence of attempts to dig into her flesh to save her life.

After the mastectomy, her hair fell out in clumps until her head resembled her daughter’s for the first three years of her life. In the beginning, she maintained hope that burning and poisoning her body would jumpstart it out of this surreal nightmare and back to when a flat tire in the rain was the pinnacle of stress in her life, and her topic of conversation at a dinner party.

Like her hair, her strength waned. And like her strength, her faith.

Now, bedridden, Kori isn’t sure what she believes. The God she had always trusted in, talked to, relied on, can’t be the same God that allows each of her numbered hairs to fall out, allows the cancer to spread to her lungs, allows this anteroom of pain.

She still prays. “God, I trust you. Help me overcome my unbelief.” And while the pain has only intensified, she accepts it, knowing that she’ll understand more on the other side. Sometimes, not always, she knows she’s not alone in her suffering.

She coughs, as if the cancer were trying to force air out, little by little. Family, friends, neighbors and her daughter gather around her bed. They pray, they sing, they remember, they listen. They wait.

Kori releases her last breath. Everyone else takes the air into their own lungs, softly crying, whispering prayers of relief, and they embrace one another. The daughter especially.

Though weeping remains for the night, there is joy in the mourning.