I saw a little girl the other day that was in my kindergarten class four years ago, Abby*. Her hair was long and curly as it was when she was small, but her face was more mature. Looking into her eyes, though, I saw a sadness that is all too familiar. It brought back so many memories, and a flood of guilt.

Abby's mother had fought off the first round of cancer a few years earlier, and she seemed very healthy and vibrant as a mom-helper in my classroom the year before I left. She was kind and had a great sense of humor. I held her in awe because she was a fighter, a survivor. So unlike my own mother who quickly became a victim.

I left that school with broken dreams and a feeling of being unwanted and unappreciated. Abby had already moved on to first grade before I left, but I learned at the end of my last year that her mother's cancer had returned.

Shortly before hearing about Abby's mother's relapse, I had news of more cancer, closer to home. My mother-in-law had a lump in her breast. I will never forget the phone call I received at school.

The cell phone rang right after we had finished a religion lesson in the church. I was walking my class across the parking lot, back to the classroom. I knew what the call was about, the biopsy was scheduled early that morning. I thought I was prepared to deal with the worst. I wasn't.

I cried in front of my class once the words registered in my brain, then I went numb. I remained that way throughout her treatment. How could God do this to her? Please, please let her win this fight. She has to.she has to show me how to face this monster called cancer, and win. I put a huge expectation on her shoulders. She HAD to win.

My mother in law and I are very close. It's the kind of relationship that I expect I would have had with my own mother if we had gotten the chance to be adults together. She has helped me through a lot. We even took a class together in college. She held me after my mother died and has valiantly taken the role as mother to me. I look up to her poise and class and her ability to look to the bright side, even if it looks as though the darkness has consumed us. I love her as if she were my own. The thought of losing her to cancer, as well, was unbearable.

I'd like to say I was a big help during her fight. I was not. I failed in the most pitiful ways. I knew of the treatments. I tried to physically help out, but I was lost as far as offering emotional support. I clammed up, never asked questions about how she felt, and basically tried to ignore the whole ordeal. All I could focus on was that she HAD to win. Dying of cancer, becoming totally sick, lying in a hospital bed - those were not options. I expected her to win this battle. She is, but not because I was of any help at the beginning.

Even though I failed miserably at being a good daughter in law, she was there for me throughout my father's ordeal. We stopped at her house immediately upon returning from my Dad's after getting the news. I just wanted to have a mom to make it all better. She held me tight on her couch. I cried and cried. I am amazed that she could hold me up when we went through the same ordeal with my dad as she had just faced without me, shortly before. She was there, always. I wish I had been there for her. I am sorry.

I felt the same guilt as I looked in little Abby's eyes. I was so consumed with how I was handling my mother in law's cancer; I nearly forgot what little Abby was going through. I prayed each occasion that I remembered, but since I had left the community of that school, I did nothing to help, again. I looked up the obituary on-line that evening after running into Abby and her family. Her mother had lived another year after I left. If I would have stayed, could I have helped? Or would I have run and hidden?