Messages of hope

It was 4 a.m., and Ray Young’s mind was in overdrive. He was thinking about his daughter Beth’s battle with cancer, thinking about the things he needed to say the next time he saw her in case it was his last.

He wanted to tell her to keep fighting. He wanted his little girl to know she was not alone and that her dad was there to lean on. Most of all Young wanted Beth to know she was loved. That last one was real important. He couldn’t say it enough.

“It just hit me that we want to say things to people. We want them to know other people are there for them,” Young said.

And with that in mind he rolled out of bed and devised a plan for reminding his daughter daily that she wasn’t in this fight alone. He’d place Burma Shave style signs along the road leading up to her house reminding her of all the things he’d been meaning to tell her. Anyone who’s been up to Green Bluff to pick apples this fall has most likely seen Young’s placards along North Sands Road. Even some of the neighbors have gotten into the act.

“Beth, we love you.”

“Beth, our prayers are with you.”

“Beth, we support you.”

“Beth, you can win this fight, champ.”

There are days when those messages are exactly what Beth Youngs needs to hear. That’s right, there’s an “s” on the end of Beth’s last name, which she acquired when she married her husband, Bob.

Of the signs along her driveway, Youngs said, there was an “oh no” factor when she first drove by them on her way home from the doctor. But she’s come to expect no less from Ray Young and her stepmother, Irene.

“You don’t tell dad and Irene you want anything because they’ll make sure you have 45 of them,” Youngs said.

It’s been seven months since Youngs was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. The tumor found growing around the outside of her esophagus had made it difficult to swallow. On at least two separate occasions, the 43-year-old mother of two boys had almost choked to death while eating.

She spent the spring undergoing radiation and chemotherapy. Only now has her hair started growing back. She bears a long, shoestring-like scar on her neck from the surgery she underwent to remove the tumor just last month. There’s still a port in the side of her abdomen where doctors, convinced Youngs could not possibly eat enough by mouth to survive her treatment, were feeding her. The last procedure Youngs underwent involved removing her esophagus and relocating her stomach upward into her chest cavity so it could be reattached to what’s left of her plumbing.

To everyone’s amazement, Youngs made it through most of the last seven months without missing any work, that is at least until she had her surgery. Part of her story is her own mother, Pat Lewellin, battling lung cancer. Lewellin died at the end of July, just before cancer claimed Youngs’ Green Bluff neighbor, Jody Dunn. The funerals took place on the same day.

“I’m tired,” Youngs said Monday. “I’m tired of being tough.”

On the day her mother died, two of Youngs’ neighbors walked over to her home to console her. It’s a long walk between houses in this fruit-orchard community northeast of Spokane; somehow that doesn’t keep people apart. They seem to know when a casserole just won’t do.

“Sometimes we can’t fix anything and what we need to do is just listen and ask questions,” said Paula Nelson, one of the neighbors Youngs relies on. “In our culture we’re always thinking we have to fix something when the most important thing we can do is listen.”

Nelson loves the signs leading to Youngs’ house. The last one really gets to her and Youngs both. The sign says, “Dad’s little princess. I love you.”