Friend #8 - Sandy

When I first set out on this meeting-new-people adventure, one of my friends came to me and said, “I want you to sit down with Sandy…but she is about to go undergo surgery for breast cancer.  Can you wait a couple of months?”

Of course, I could wait. 

I wanted to know what it was like to be hit with the heavy weight of a cancer diagnosis.  I had heard that Sandy was doing much better now so when I sat down with her in a Starbucks on a chilly Sunday morning, my first question was ripped right out of an old Tim McGraw song:  “How does it hit you when you get that kind of news?”

I was prepared for earth shattering trauma but Sandy just shrugged and said, “I’m seventy.  Things like that are to be expected.”  In a shockingly honest display of her own mortality, Sandy went on to explain that she realizes she is probably closer to the end of her life than the beginning.  And while the burning sensation in her arms is annoying and the hair loss still forces her to wear a wig, she is happy to be feeling more like herself.  She also understands that a cancer diagnosis for some people can be more overwhelming but in her heart, she always believed it was going to be alright.  Even in the beginning. 

I asked her how she could have so much faith and she explained to me it was because she is a witch.

Wait…what?!?                                         

It took me a beat or two to recover from that one. 

When Sandy was twenty years old, a glowing entity came to her and said, “We mean you no harm”.  Since then, strange things happen around Sandy.  Lights come on and off without anyone touching the switch.  Washing machines come on for no reason.  Knives pull out of their holders and lay down on the counter…and that’s just a few of the strange things that happen.  She has a sense of being surrounded by spirits but because it’s been going on for so long, it has become her normal.

Years ago, Sandy was married to a man who was a house painter.  There was one particular house where the job began small and then got bigger…and bigger.  Sandy and her husband became good friends with the couple who owned the house.  The two couples even had dinner together.  But unbeknownst to Sandy, her husband was having an affair with the woman who owned that house and eventually Sandy’s husband left her to be with the other woman.  Sandy was devastated!  So in order to heal her broken heart, she found herself drifting towards alternative treatments, sources that involved energy like reiki, crystals and herbs.  She was accustomed to feeling outside energy since spirits had surrounded her for most of her life.  And in her journey to heal herself, Sandy met a number of women who were also interested in energy healing methods.  They didn’t come all at once.  They came one at a time but after a while, Sandy began to notice that many of the women she consorted with, who believed as she believed, were witches. 

For her, witchcraft is less about a religion and more about a lifestyle.  She isn’t quiet about her beliefs, although many of her friends are.  She doesn’t belong to a coven…yet she labels herself as a witch.  And the women who surround her have become her best support.  As a seventy-year-old woman facing cancer without a spouse, Sandy needed help over the last few months.  She’s had people who have cooked for her, sat with her during her chemo treatments.  She even had one friend come over to pick up the dog poop in her yard.  These women, fifteen or so in number, have created a supportive community structure, leaving Sandy no opportunities other than just to get better.  She credits these women’s healing energy for having paved her way away from cancer.

“It’s a funny thing,” she said.  “Be careful for what you wish for.” 

Apparently, in the years leading up to her cancer diagnosis, Sandy said she often wished she could lose twenty-five pounds and be able to afford a boob job.  Now that cancer is in the rearview mirror, she realizes she has lost twenty-five pounds because of her lack of appetite and along with her mastectomy, came a free boob job.  Sandy laughed at the irony in a way that made me love her and as I sat with her, I found myself being absorbed by her energy.  There was calm.  There was peace.  But mostly, there was love in this woman who lives her life outside of the customary boundaries.