Wednesday was my last day of treatment;

I thought maybe finishing would feel like nothing at all or like a letdown, but it was ecstatic. At Fox Chase in the radiation department waiting room there's a bell on the wall by the elevator and when you finish your treatment you ring it and everyone stops what they're doing and claps for you and while I was in the dressing room where I had for 32 mornings taken off my top and put on a green gown and then come out of treatment and taken the green gown off and put my top back on again I thought

I'm not going to do it, I'm just going to walk out quietly and be done but then the bell was there on the wall and the receptionist caught my eyes and I grabbed and rang it three loud times and everyone there, people I didn't know checking in for their appointments and two interns running down the steps into the lobby, dripping their coffees, and the spouses sitting on the couches reading the same magazines every morning

they all stopped and clapped

for me.
***
and I caught my reflection in the parking garage window leaving Fox Chase and I paused making eye contact with myself and I thought

I am really done with this now

and there was something different in my eyes, a kind of focus, a kind of looking at things clearly, looking at things straight

that comes from having faced my death and come out to life again, loving it.
***
From there I went home, took the kids to school and took myself to Starbucks for a coffee and scone. I hadn't had much time to pause between George starting kindergarden and my really busy time at work starting up and finishing up treatment. I've been eating really extra healthily but decided to get and eat a scone, the cinnamon chip kind with icing, which felt really decadent. I sat down in a comfy chair, grabbed someone's New York Times Arts section and started skimming an article about Kanye West and his debacle which I had entirely missed. It felt fun and cheap to read about pop celebrity drama while nibbling my scone

and then it hit me again, pausing to look around at the mothers with their toddlers and the students with their laptops and the business people having meetings, that this morning I actually finished it--

all of my cancer treatment, I made it--

and for a second I wanted to stand up in Starbucks and since there was no bell there just shout,
start shouting or just speaking in a loud, joyful voice

listen everybody this is what happened to me and I survived it and I'm alive

(have you ever had a crazy thought come over you for about three seconds like you think you could jump down from somewhere really high and not get hurt and then less than one second later you know not to do that because of course you would get hurt

the moment was kind of like that.) i finished my scone quickly because i had an appointment to get to.
****
and I don't mean a dr. appt, nooooooooooo! I had been given a gift certificate from the parents of my teen group for an exclusive-ish spa and I saved it to use for my last day and i made an appointment for a body wrap massage.

it was awesome. exfoliation, moisturizing and lots of deep touch. i let myself drift into a sleepless kind of rem zone and when it was over i felt even more done with the cancer than ever. i had new skin.
****
the timing has been perfect finishing two days before Rosh Hashana, the new year. For a long time now, maybe ten or twelve years i've been leading children's services for the High Holy days. I told Rabbi Yael about a week ago that i was a little worried, that i felt kind of unmotivated about the holidays.

i said it feels frankly all kind of superfluous to me, the rituals, the examination, i have spent seven months looking at my life and death, i've done the work already.

and Yael said yes, that's right, and to be in that, to hold that, to know that. to not force anything else to happen.

last night when Rosh Hashana began, Fred and I took the kids to his parents house for dinner, I felt just a simple kind of happiness and sweetness that is hard for me to put into words. i guess i am feeling both the strength in me and also a kind of lightness, of empty pockets, of having done a lot of work of letting go.

the services i lead today were okay, probably not the best i've ever lead.
****
June found Bunny Wednesday afternoon. We were in her room and I started cleaning her closet, one of about a thousand projects in the house that I couldn't get to all spring and summer because of the energy I had to reserve to get myself through chemo and radiation. I pulled out a fabric bag that I had put all of her toy pocketbooks in and there was Bunny.

June was excited, but not as much as I was and Bunny's mostly just hung around her room for the last few days. So there.

I've had a few wisps of hair framing my face that never fell out when the rest of my hair did. They've made me very happy all summer because I could pull them out and down, around a scarf or hat and from the front you'd never know I was really bald.

But my new hair is coming in stronger every day, dark little spikes and the long pieces of auburn hair were getting in the way of my new hair coming in evenly. Yesterday morning, before erev Rosh Hashana, I took George's purple craft scissors and I cut them off.
****
After my spa treatment I went for a long walk in Chestnut Hill and it started to rain. I ducked into a sandwich shop at the top of the hill. It was noon by then and the shop was busy with take-out orders. I stepped to the front of the counter to see what looked good.

As I was debating whether to keep indulging or get back on the wagon (went with the haverti on black bread, you decide), a woman behind the counter looked at me and said

Hang in there. You'll get through it.

I was breathless for a minute; no one in the last four months since I've been wearing scarves has said anything so direct.

I'm doing great I said I finished today.

That's wonderful she said it only gets better it's been a year for me

Yeah yeah I said blinking weeping

and realizing that around us everyone had stopped their busy ordering and were shushed up for a minute

and there in the sandwich shop i rang the bell again

i did it i did it i made it!
****
i sang the songs with the children today, apples and honey for rosh hashana, we sang the shema and marched with the Torah and I opened it up and read from the Torah, from the first words

Bereshit, in the beginning of God forming the heavens and the earth

there was tohu v'vohu, unformed chaos and ruach, wind or was it the spirit of God

floating over the surface of the water

and God said let there be light

and there was light

and God saw the light was good

and the light God called day and the darkness God called night
****
and really, to tell you the God's honest truth here, my ambivalence about this holiday is that I am, honestly, a little shaky, talking about it all right now, talking about the new year. Knowing that a year ago I had no idea what was going to come, knowing that I have no idea what is ahead. That none of us does.

But I still love it, I do, the ritual and the children, the round challahs, the apples, the shofar. There is less innocence and less sleepiness in me now. Marking of time is different.

September 16th is going to be my anniversary day from now on and Rosh Hashana, God willing, will take me back to this complicated feeling of what it means to be done.