Family Clings To Hope Cancer Is Gone For Good

There is a place beyond pain, where greeting card sentimentality and positive thinking don’t cut it anymore.

Don’t ask for rhyme or reason.

Don’t beg for fair play. Grief is the gravity here.

This is the story of a Spokane mother who knows the landscape of loss.

Her name is Mary Anne Ruddis.

On Easter Sunday 1994, Kerry, Mary Anne’s husband of 10 years, died of cancer. Four months later, on Aug. 6, her daughter, Nikki, lost her own battle with cancer. She was 9.

Numb beyond articulation, Mary Anne packed up and moved her two young sons from Southern California to the Spokane Valley.

She wanted to be near her brothers. She wanted to get a college AA degree. She wanted to learn how to breathe again.

The other day, Mary Anne said goodbye to her oldest son, Michael. A cancerous brain tumor took him Sept. 26. He was 12.

“When Michael was diagnosed, I just believed he’d be OK,” says Mary Anne. “I told myself, `It’s not gonna happen again.”’ Although they aren’t completely certain, doctors suspect the cancers are connected to some renegade gene.

But explanations are casual comfort compared to the enormous reality of what has happened: three out of five family members gone in five years.

“We all have measured the sadness in our lives by Mary Anne’s life,” says her sister, Maggie Cahill, pursing her lips as she spits out two words like rifle reports: “Horrible. Unbelievable.”

Mary Anne smiles. “But I don’t want to be the barometer,” she says.

It is early on an overcast Thursday evening. The living room of Mary Anne’s modest home is still filled with the trappings from the memorial service held Oct. 2 in a Catholic church.

Slightly wilted flowers spray out of funereal stands. A board covered with snapshots of Michael leans against one of the displays.

A large framed photograph beams from the center of the room. What a beautiful kid. Blond hair. White teeth. An easy, open smile.

This is not the face of a doomed child. This is the face of a chronic kidder who was bent on beating his classmates out the door each day for recess, says Jeni Tesch, Michael’s teacher at West Valley City School.

She noticed that something was wrong when Michael started fourth grade. He couldn’t read, yet a year earlier he had been a top student.

The teacher called Mary Anne, who told her about Kerry and Nikki. Michael had been complaining of headaches. “Do you think he might have a tumor?” she asked, unable to keep panic from her voice.

Tests confirmed it. Dr. John Demakas burned away as many of the malignant cells as he dared. The neurosurgeon knew he couldn’t get it all.

“I learned a valuable lesson from my sister, Nikki, when I was 7 years old,” Michael wrote in a prize-winning essay for school sometime after the surgery.

“My sister died that year. I learned how to be brave and that you can always try to be happy, but sometimes it is OK to cry and let your sad feelings show.”

Now there is Matt, 10, a handsome, spunky lad in his own right.

How do you tell a smart kid who has watched his dad, sister and big brother suffer not to worry? Or be scared your number in the Bad Luck Lottery might be called next?

“It’s really hard,” says Matt of his state of mind. “In one big word: terrible.”

But living in fear is a cancer of a different kind. The last thing Mary Anne wants is for her son to be a slave to grim speculation.

“I tell Matt anything is possible,” she says, “but I don’t think (his getting cancer) is going to happen. And we’re going to live each day like it won’t.”

And through her darkest times, Mary Anne has seen the best of people. Neighbors have rallied to help. Educators, parents and students at West Valley City School have been true good Samaritans, raising money to help offset her staggering financial losses.

A memorial fund is open at any US Bank branch. “It’s hard always being on the receiving end,” says Mary Anne. “When do I get a turn to be on the giving end?”

Not long before he died, when Michael had come to terms with the inevitable, Mary Anne says she and her son came to an understanding.

“I told him he had to come back and tell me what it was like,” she says, pausing a beat to add, “I’m still waiting.”