Sandcastles

Yesterday was slightly rough. I'm usually a pretty tough cookie, I can handle the emotional components of having Cystic Fibrosis. I know the ropes-things aren't always easy, but I take it and make the best. But yesterday, last night actually, I crumbled.
My friend Maureen (Mo) has been pretty ill lately. I've known her since we were knee high to a grasshopper. We used to be snot nosed little girls running through Sunny Shores Sea Camp thinking we were in charge of things. She's the boss lady. She has so much sass in her-and its what I love most about her. She never takes crap from anyone, and my goodness she could make me laugh so hard I could black out from laughter! But she is sick now, and I can't even read her perky little updates on Facebook. It hurts. In fact, it aches, my heart is breaking for her. She's on a vent right now, and things are not looking to positive. But she is a pistol, and a fighter, and I know she won't let this little battle get in her way. She's been blessed with the most loving family and friends-and she knows this, and knows how we love her. I selfishly hope she keeps fighting, even if it is for us and not herself anymore. I want one more time to see her and have her make me smile.
All this happening had opened up a wound with CF that I tend to try and hide with positive mental bandages. When I first became really sick, Jon described myself as being a "sandcastle" to him. At first I didn't understand. But when you have a sandcastle, and its nice and compacted with hard sand, and you go to hug it and love it crumbles away from you. This is how it feels having friends with CF. I love them so much, and I wouldn't want to NOT know them, but the more I love the more it feels they are washed away from me. It becomes hard. I only have a handful of CF friends still alive, and I make more all the time, but the ones who've been taken away that have made a large impact on my heart. When I fight, I fight in their honor. Some don't make it because of things they did, the way the took care of themselves-and I learn from it- as if that was why God gave them to me in the first place. I'm at an age now where I have seen more friends go than most people have lost in a lifetime. And Mo fighting this battle has made this pain come to the surface. I don't want to lose anyone else. My mind is not ready. Neither is my heart.
All that being said, yesterday on the way home from dinner, I just crumbled in the car. I was sobbing uncontrollably, inconsolably. Poor Jon didn't know what to say or how to comfort me, because he to knows what its like to love a sandcastle that is being washed away. We both agree though, it is hard to watch the castles being swept to sea- we love,cherish, and adore every mintue we got to play and enjoy the sandcastle. This time here, in my sandcastle, is the most precious time I have.