Monsoon Rains: When Summer is Pulled From the Ground

Ocotillo after rain

palo verde after rain

I met with my friend in the season of drought, a period of in between.

The rest of the world has winter, spring, summer and fall, but in the Sonoran Desert we have summer rains, drought, winter rains, and drought.

I met my friend after the summer monsoons, but before the soaking rains of winter.  I sat with her while she received chemotherapy, the medication dripping from the IV bag, down the line, into the port in her chest,drop by drop.

Yet, outside no drops were falling in the season of in between.

At the time I was working on a fictional piece and wanted accurate details for a chemo scene. Dad was in the middle of treatment for melanoma and my mom was recently diagnosed, going through tests to determine the type of cancer.

I didn't know then that Mom would be diagnosed with the same cancer as my friend--ovarian--and the fictional piece would never be written because reality would invade my fictional world.

My friend had registered at the welcome desk downstairs next to the sign: Patient privacy is important to us. Please stand away from the desk until our staff is ready to assist you. I appreciated the sentiment, but knew we would soon enter the chemo room where there was absolutely no privacy at all.

Having cancer is not without irony.

In the waiting room, upcoming events had rotated on a digital screen: Journey to Wellness Support Group on every 3rd Wednesday. Chair Yoga on Mondays at 10 a.m. Chemotherapy Class on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays from 3-4. Expressive Art Class on Tuesdays. Gastrointestinal Cancer Support Group. Breast Cancer Support Group....The season of in between has a language and a busyness all its own.

While the medication dripped, my friend and I talked about our families--her five children and my four. We talked marriage and college, grandbabies and husbands.

A framed photo of green leaves on branches adorned the walls--the photo--a perfect reminder in the desert, where ocotillo, palo verde, and other plants often dump leaves in the drought of summer in order to survive. According to Janice Emily Bowers in The Mountains Next Door, the palo verde, the green-barked tree of the desert, "first sheds its pinhead leaflets, then, as the dry season continues, jettison(s) a few twigs, and, if relief still fails to come, sacrifice(s) branches or entire limbs."

Cancer patients, of all people, understand the concept.

Yet, the wall photo spoke of another season--when plants have sufficient moisture for foliage. Framed hope--the promise of an ending to the in between, when rains would come again.

Almost four years have passed since that day, four cycles of summer rains, drought, winter rains and drought. Four years of in between.

We are now in the season of summer rains, when temperatures are still in the triple digits but the oppressive oven heat of summer now steams with humidity, where monsoon rains play center stage to some awesome apocalyptic photography--not the gentler rains of winter that soak the packed earth with the necessary moisture of spring, but the torrential dumping of water, accompanied by lightning, dust and wind, because sometimes it takes just that to "pull summer from the ground".

Last week my friend responded to the pulling and her time of in between ended. Although my heart is sad, I am thankful her season of drought is over, the casting off of limbs in order to survive.

Today I step outside and watch the monsoon clouds gather. The smell of rain is in the air.

Tiny couplets of leaves adorn the ocotillo and palo verde branches.

Life has been pulled from the ground.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. - 1 Corinthians 15:54 NIV