Acceptance “I know I’m on the final process. I don’t know how long ... I could go to sleep one morning and stay in a coma for a couple of days and then slip away.” Faith “It can’t take God away from me. God is going to be there. The cancer can do what it wants, but God will be there until the end. God is going to hold me up and walk me through this no matter what.” Hope Remains Judy McCandless has several books about positive thinking such as this one titled “A Reason for Hope” by Michael S. Berry.

FURRY FRIEND - Judy McCandless gives her dog Akira a hug outside her Wise County home.

NATURE’S BEAUTY -The dying process has allowed Judy McCandless, at top in photo at left with housemate Kathy Falcon, to see beauty in unexpected places, such as a spider and its web. Above, McCandless goes through baby photos of herself as she puts together a scrapbook for her son.

FOCUS ON THE POSITIVE - A message framed on the wall describes Judy McCandless’ perspective on cancer.

Life’s final journey

by Brian Knox

Perspective: n., a specific point of view in understanding or judging things or events, especially one that shows them in their true relations to one another.

Webster’s New World Dictionary

Last fall, a spider wove a large web in what seemed like the most inconvenient place at Judy McCandless’ home: right in front of her front door.

But instead of tearing down the spider’s handiwork, she allowed it to stay. She saw something beautiful in it that she hadn’t seen before.

“Two years ago, I would have killed the spider,” she said. “Now, I enjoy watching it.”

Looking out the glass front door, McCandless was able to watch the daily cycle of life and death play out between the spider and its unsuspecting prey.

Perhaps she could identify with those insects that would become tangled in the web. McCandless no doubt felt tangled in her own web spun not by a spider but by ovarian cancer.

Like those insects, McCandless knows there is no escape – she has accepted her fate.

Or perhaps she identified with the spider – constantly waiting patiently and hopeful, not knowing what the future holds.

Her web of faith, family and friends have been woven with love and gives her support.

Spider or prey. Acceptance or resignation. It all depends on perspective.

There comes a time to give up the fight – a point where you quit trying to beat the disease and accept death.

For McCandless, that point was just a few weeks ago, she said.

“I probably had a feeling a while back, but the time when I knew it was about three weeks ago when I was throwing up continuously,” she said. “Now I’m not able to eat much at all and I’m getting weaker and weaker.

“I know I’m on the final process. I don’t know how long ... the nurses can’t tell me. They won’t tell me, and sometimes that’s scary. I wish they had a crystal ball. But they are not God.

“I could go to sleep one morning and stay in a coma for a couple of days and then slip away.”
Accepting death doesn’t mean you are at complete peace. While she doesn’t fear death itself, the dying process can be very scary at times. McCandless said her outlook depends much on how she is feeling on a particular day

“Right now, you look at me and you don’t think it is time,” she said. “I’m not that far gone, but two or three weeks ago I thought I was. I was ready to go. I was so sick and so tired of being scared.”

It is in those times when she is ready to give up that she relies on her web of support.

“Last week, I told Kathy I was ready to give up, because it is hard to keep throwing up at the level I was throwing up. And of course, Kathy was saying, ‘No, no. It’s not your time. It’s not time to lose you.’ But it was so gut wrenching. It’s hard to explain how forceful it is when you eat and you get sick. Your body is trying so hard to get rid of this stuff,” McCandless said.

“You get so tired of getting sick over drinking water, drinking soda (and) taking your medicine. I would just get sick over everything to where I didn’t want to take any of my medicine.”

In the past few months, McCandless has lost quite a bit of weight, her face has become thinner and older looking.

She speaks slowly and becomes tired if she engages in conversation for long periods of time. Sometimes she loses her train of thought or lapses into sleep for a few minutes.

Her skin has yellowed, the result of a failing liver.
“My liver is shutting down, so my skin is turning real yellow and my eyes are turning more yellow,” she said. “I’ve been itching a lot because my liver is not able to get rid of wastes like it normally would, so it is coming out my pores.

McCandless is rarely hungry, and when she is she usually doesn’t eat much. If she tries to eat when she is not hungry, she normally throws it up.

“It is real hard on the families to see you not eating,” McCandless said. “When they see you not eating, they know that you are going downhill.”

On McCandless’ living room wall hangs a framed cross stitch made by her friend Carol Stone. It is a message about all the things that cancer can not do. It describes McCandless’ perspective on her cancer.

“It (cancer) couldn’t destroy my faith,” she said. “It couldn’t take away my friendships with people. It can hurt my body, but that is it. It can’t invade the soul. I think it tries to, and you have to fight that. It cannot silence courage.

“It can’t take God away from me. God is going to be there. The cancer can do what it wants, but God will be there until the end. God is going to hold me up and walk me through this no matter what.”

Acceptance vs. resignation. Two words that represent feelings that are similar in many ways, yet almost opposites. It is the difference between being at peace versus the absence of hope.

McCandless continues to have hope. Maybe not a hope of beating cancer or even living much longer, but she still has hope that each day will be lived to the fullest.

Days are precious. Even hours are precious now.

Because she knows her time on Earth will soon end, McCandless is able to see beauty in things that would go unnoticed by most people. In addition to the spider web, McCandless enjoyed watching the weeds grow in her yard.

“We like to let the wildflowers bloom and stay long because it is amazing how beautiful these, what I call ‘weed flowers,’ end up becoming,” she said. “It’s just amazing how many blessings God gives us every day that we don’t always get to stop and see because, ‘We don’t like that spider’ or ‘We don’t want those weeds in our yards.’

In the spring and early summer, McCandless went around taking pictures of the flowers in her yard. She plans to use them in a slide show presentation to be shown at the viewing service after her death.

Housemate Kathy Falcon relayed a story about their two ducks.

“She won’t let me clip their wings,” Falcon said. “The first time she saw them fly, she said, ‘You can’t clip the wings. They have to be able to fly.’”

“That defeats the purpose,” McCandless responded. “I just couldn’t see it. They are meant to be here.”

The spider web is now long gone from her front door, replaced by a beautiful stained glass window featuring the distinctive teal-colored ribbon which signifies ovarian cancer awareness.

Although McCandless cannot shake free of her cancer web, she knows that it too will one day be gone.

And in its place will be something unimaginably beautiful - a place of spiritual and physical peace.

To McCandless, dying is not the end. She is heading home.

It’s all depends on perspective.