I guess everybody goes through the stage of asking 'Why me?' when they first find out they have cancer. Once the protective layer of shock is peeled back enough to allow cold shards of reality to pierce through, and the terrible hugeness of the situation hits, you can feel that darkest of all shadows creeping toward you from behind.

At first there was mainly denial. Of course it couldn't really be happening; I was young and fit; I had so many dreams and plans. This alien world of hospital rooms and sterile bedding wasn't at a place in which I belonged. Disease and despair seemed to radiate from all the patients I passed as I drifted through the corridors, those living ghosts haunting the world of the dead. Everything was bright and cold, devoid of life and colour. And as I sat in that room and could not help but hear the words the doctor spoke, I felt that dead world reach for me, until I turned away and hid in my blanket of denial.

"How well she's coping," people would say as I strode past my family and friends, and busied myself with the mundane things that amount to that which we call life. "How brave she is," echoed from behind my turned back as I avoided the emotions that I didn't even know were surging within me. I think somehow, in those lost, numb days, I lost touch with my soul and became only how I wanted others to see me. Brave, alive, unfrightened. Numbly, unfeelingly, in denial.

Until it really hit me.

It wasn't when I first started the chemotherapy. Not even the sickness and the fatigue from the drugs, the horror and revulsion at finding my pillow covered in hair in the morning, or even the dreadful sympathetic looks I received from my family - those ever-so-kind gestures that made me want to scream. Those I could kid myself I was dealing with, knowing that this sick person was not me, not how I was, not how I would be when all this ended and I could forget about it. For I didn't even think that it might not end, that what the doctors said could ever be true, that those sympathetic and terrifying looks were not for a sick child, but for a dying mother.

It never hit me at all, though all of that. But it can't last forever, and the realisation of what was happening, right now, irreversibly, had somehow already taken up residence in some unconscious part of my mind. Waiting for the time when my defences came down, ready to tear apart the fragile framework I had built to shield me from the world outside. And then that time came.

I was only sitting watching TV, nothing special. Some old show, I forget what; I forget a lot now. And Julie ran up to me, Jemima, 'the scraggiest doll in the world' (a joke we had) held in her arm. "Mummy! Hiya!" she beamed at me.

"Hi cheeky!" I replied. "How's my little grandbaby!"

Julie giggled and held Jemima out to me. "Jema's sad," she said.

"Aww, poor little baby," I said as I took the worn little dolly and cuddled it. "What's wrong?"

Julie looked pensive then. I remember that, like the way you first notice a constant sound only when it stops. "Jema's scared, mummy," she said earnestly, searching my eyes. "She doesn't want grandma to go away."

And the with last part of my denial, still trying to avoid all of this, I could only say "I'm not going anywhere, honey."

If she hadn't started to cry as I said that, I could even have made it. Maybe even still be there now, refusing to believe that I can't still do everything I used to, still trying to get out of this bed, to run and laugh and play silly games with my daughter.

I held her and I bawled, as lost as a child, bewildered and scared. I held little Julie, as I thought how I might never see her grow up, to be there to support her, to be proud of her, to love her and to fuss over her as only a mother can.

And, thank God, she understood, more than I ever did, what was happening. And she cried with me, until there were no more tears to cry, and I knew then that I would never be alone, never have to hide again. For there was no place I could go where I would be alone or unloved.

I lie here, watching through misty windows, tiny glimpses of distant life outside my room as people fight their way through those everyday mundane struggles I used to face. Maybe it's getting near, I don't feel as fit as I did all that time ago. I smile at Julie; she still looks so young as she sits there with her husband. Little Jemima runs into the room. Not so little now, I have to remind myself, and almost chuckle as at my granddaughter as I remember the old, bedraggled doll that first bore her name.

I thank God again that I beat the cancer and lived so long.

"Why me?" I ask myself again, and only feel happy and proud. I’m an old woman, perhaps dying now, yet unafraid.

Why me? I don’t know why, but I guess I'm the luckiest person in the world.

I was there when it happened. I saw the knife and the terrified look in her eyes. It was all over within minutes. She lay there motionless, covered with blood, her eyes fixed on something no one else could see. In that moment, I loved her more than ever before. I wanted to run to her and tell her how much I loved her but the dark figure of my father hunched over her made me hide under the staircase, hoping he wouldn't discover me there. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deep in an attempt to calm down, but the warm, nauseating smell of my mother's blood was thick in the air, making me gag. I crawled deeper under the stairs, praying for him not to hear as I gasped for air, tears running from the corners of my closed eyes. I couldn't tell you how long it was before I heard him drag her lifeless body down the hall, but it seemed like hours. I heard the door bang shut as he left. I sat there, under the staircase for a long time, unable to think about anything but the sound the knife made piercing her body over and over again. It was the thought of my father coming home and finding me that made me get up so hastily I hit my head on the stairs and saw stars. I felt something warm and wet trickling down the inside of my leg and my first, irrational thought was that he had somehow stabbed me too, before realising that I had wet myself. I climbed the stairs to my own room and changed into dry clothes. I didn't think I'd get any sleep that night, but as soon as I climbed in my bed I was out cold.

I woke up in the morning to my father singing in the bathroom. He was a natural born singer with a deep and soothing voice that for some reason had always reminded me of warm butter. This morning it was different, he sounded somehow gravelly and tense. I got out of bed, not sure what to do. I didn't want to face him, I knew I wouldn't be able to hide the fact that I had seen what happened. I had never kept secrets from him, surely he could see the truth in my eyes. He called out to me to get downstairs and have breakfast. I went to the kitchen, not wanting to anger him. He had a temper and I'd had my share of punches during arguments. He was sitting at the table, immersed in the newspaper. I wished I could be somewhere else, anywhere but here, sitting across the table from the man who murdered my mother, watching him stuff his face with bacon and eggs.

Had I been more than six years old, I probably would have hated him, but I was still too young to have feelings like that towards the man who tucked me in at night, kissed my knees better when I fell down and scraped them and took me to baseball practice every Saturday. I didn't know how to feel, so I chose to feel nothing.I felt nothing when my father called the police later that evening, telling them mother had never come home from the shop last night. I felt nothing when the police found her body at the dumpster a couple of days later, chopped up and stuffed into plastic bags. I felt nothing when my grandma dressed me up in a black suit for her funeral a week later. Mother was gone and my feelings were buried with her.

I sat on the sofa, looking at puffy-eyed women sniffling into white handkerchiefs and men in identical black suits muttering condolences to my father. I was patted on the head and told how brave I was, by whom, it didn't matter. I got looks of pity and was called 'Sport' by people I couldn't remember ever even seeing before. I still don't know if any of them cared about my mother's untimely death or if they were there just as a courtesy.

I was tucked in bed early, before all the guests had left. My father gave me a goodnight kiss and told me everything's going to be fine. I didn't feel tired at all, so I got up after the lights had been turned off and sneaked downstairs, under the staircase. I could feel the smell of blood in my nostrils even though my father had scrubbed the floor before I woke up the morning after it happened. I scanned the room and saw two pairs of high heels standing at the exact point where I had seen my mother die. I followed the legs up to the faces of my aunt and someone I thought I recognised from somewhere, maybe she was a colleague of my mother's. They were talking quietly but if I was very careful I could just make out their words.

"It's a shame, she was so young," said my aunt, shaking her head sadly.
"Yes, and little Timmy, how will he handle not having a mother," said the other woman.
"I'm most worried about my brother, I don't know what he'll do."
The other woman looked over at my father who was sitting on the sofa, resting his head on his hands. He must have looked like a completely crushed man to others, but they weren't there when it happened. They didn't hear him laugh as he swung the knife.

The other lady looked back at my aunt.
"They always looked so happy together."
"Yeah, poor John. He loved that woman to bits."

Under the staircase, I started to giggle.

I'm sorry to start out with such an overused cliche', but days like this make me think I should have listened to my mother. She told me to go to dental hygenist school. She warned me. "Maddy," she'd said in her high-pitched voice that was half speaking, half shrieking, "Maddy, you have to have something to fall back on."

I remember telling her how unappealing the idea of staring down the throats of dozens of strangers while scraping tarter, nicotine and coffee stains off of hundreds of filthy teeth every day was to me. I couldn't envision anything worse.

How wrong I was.

"Don't forget to put my bread over to the side," commanded this middle aged woman before me. "I don't want it all smashed up at the end of the belt." I briefly glanced up at her from the scanner unit and smiled the obligatory "customer service" smile while assuring her that her slices of whole-grain wheat would remain in their intended form while in my capable hands.

"Yes, ma'am."

I'd passed the halfway point in my shift, thankfully. During my lunch break Mr. Arsenty, the store manager, had descended from the upstairs offices to talk with me about my possibilities for future advancement. While he'd been blathering on, I'd been exhibiting my mastery of a much-practiced and valuable skill: appearing as though I'm paying attention. My thoughts during this time were wide-ranging. I was mildly irritated that Mr. Arsenty was using up my lunch break to discuss company business. I noted my complete lack of excitement at the prospect of donning a dusty gold polyester Assistant Manager's smock instead of the burnt orange polyester Cashier's smock I was currently wearing. I hypothesized about the reasons i would even be considered for a promotion and could only come up with two possibilities. Either it was because my drawer always balanced within five cents at the end of every shift or my eyes had reached the appropriate level of dimness and lack of sparkle or life for me to qualify for a managerial promotion.

At this last thought I stopped faking eye-contact with Mr. Arsenty and genuinely looked in them for some indication of how depressingly dead an individual would have to be inside in order to reach the "Store Manager" rung of this corporate nightmare. Just how accepting of the monotony and pointless policy and union dues and supervisory control does a person have to reach Mr Arsenty's pinnacle position?

I didn't like what I saw behind his glasses.

"So," he'd continued, oblivious that I had no idea from what he was continuing, "do you think you're ready for the management training program?"

I reacted as though I was scripted. I feigned interest and enthusiasm for the opportunity and was acceptably disgusting with my "thank you"s to be convincing, and just as I felt my stomach contract and convulse to the point where I might have blown my lunch all over the man's shoes, my break was over. I went back to my register.

Scan the items, push them down the belt to the bagger(red polyester vest) ring up the total. . . cash, check or charge? Over and over again for 8 hours, it's enough to make me hope for an aneurism or freak natural disaster, just to break up this intolerable rhythm, the humiliating monotonous "have a nice day" lies that come with every receipt.

Could manning the customer service desk in a gold smock possibly be any less spiritually draining than what I was already doing? I doubted it. I doubted it more with every bit of thought devoted.

"Hey, watch out for my bread, will ya?" It was an elderly woman's voice but when I looked to the source of it I saw nothing but a featureless head, a blank face.

I stared blankly for a moment with the loaf of bread in my hands. Only the alarmed sound of the woman's distinct objections made me aware that my fists were smashing the loaf into a misshapen unrecognizable blob.

I handed it back to her. If I had seen her face I probably would have seen it angry or upset. As it was, however, I smiled.

"Have a nice day," I told her. For the first time I was sincere.

I left the smock lying in my parking space as I drove home to call my mother.