This one’s going to be about my sister Patti. Patricia Luca, the one we have been praying for since last June, when the doctors found a large mass in her colon which had spread to other vital organs in her body. The impact for me at that time was like getting a phone call saying, ‘your sister has been in a car crash and we don’t think she’s going to make it.’ I’ve been reeling ever since. The whole family is in shock – our baby sister. People ask me all the time, “How’s your sister doing?” And I don’t know what to say. Well, what I always say is, ‘if she walked into this room right now, you would not know she was sick.’ There’s a bounce to her step and a sparkle in her eyes that the gravest reports from her doctors cannot diminish.
Patti has always towered over me and, consequently, most people assumed she was older, when we were growing up. It’s not just her stature but her ability to commandeer a conversation. If someone asked me a question, she would answer for me (when I was in my 20s even!). It annoyed her, everyone always thinking she was the elder sibling, to which I would helpfully reply, “Well quit taking over every situation, why don’t you?”
There are four years between the two of us and it took a long time for us to become close. It was my own friends, in high school, who liked having her around, hanging out with us. She was funny and a good fit. When she would come to visit me at university, in Boston, she charmed my roommates. Walking down a city street, talking away, she would stop, mid-sentence, to say hello to a passerby. She was in high school when my parents decided to move to our summer home in Maine year round. I worried that my sister would never be able to live safely in a city again, she was too friendly and naïve.
When she was in university, she spent her junior year abroad, in Switzerland. She studied German in preparation for her stay and found herself in a French speaking canton. It took some time before her high school French came back to her, but when I arrived in March, to spend a month with her, she was fluent in both languages – German and French. She amazed me then; she amazes me still.
Now, with three beautiful grown kids, she finds herself gravely facing mortality. Patti does not focus on gravity, or mortality. Her husband tells me how much the nurses love her when she goes for her chemo treatments. ‘She’s got them laughing within minutes of her arrival. She’s not their typical cancer patient,’ he says with a smile on a worried face.
I know so many of you are facing this very same situation. I know each member of our parish family has a similar story to tell. This is my story. Thank you for your prayers, I will pray for you and the one that’s in your heart.
