A Lonely Journey Bravely Faced

They were having coffee at Starbucks last fall when Cathy Moore turned her head, just slightly to the side. Her husband, Michael Talbot, noticed a lump the size of a small marble on the side of her neck and was instantly seized by a familiar, icy terror. They started to cry, fearing--perhaps knowing--that cancer had returned.

For two years, Cathy had responded to breast cancer with both fists, with all the strength of her heart and soul. She thought the battery of treatments, including mastectomy, had stifled the disease.

Until Oct. 9, 1996, she thought she had won.

*

Five months earlier, Cathy, a Redondo Beach psychologist, and Robin Freeman Bernstein, a Santa Monica marriage, family and child therapist, had co-written “A Journal for Healing” (Doubleday). It was a collection of suggested topics to write about, designed to assist those suffering through pain and illness.

In a tragic twist, as they were finishing the book, Cathy’s breast cancer was diagnosed. The journal became her depository of entangled emotions, her confidant in a journey inherently lonely.

“I can’t believe it’s back,” she wrote on Oct. 15, 1996, when the cancer was confirmed. “Tomorrow I’m supposed to get reconstructive [breast surgery]. I was so excited--now this, like a punch in the stomach.

“How will I tell my children--the worst part for me. Little Johnnie and Katie. It’s so unfair. I want their lives to be simple, easy. . . .

“So today I picked up Johnnie at school--he asked right away, ‘What happened?’ I told him, ‘not good.’ He was angry--very angry.”

As before, her primary concern was not for herself but for her children, Johnnie Kenderski, 15, and Katie Kenderski, 19. They thought it odd--yet typical--of their mother that whenever she delivered news of the cancer she would apologize, as if she had failed them. “I’m sorry,” she would say repeatedly, “I’m so sorry.”

Cathy Moore gripped fiercely any thread, any shadow of optimism, any reason for hope.

On Oct. 16, she wrote, “I believe I will win. I believe all will be well.”

*

But shadows die in darkness, and two days later, fear overcame her: “Today at 2:30 I start chemo again--new and old stuff--the feeling’s the same--out of control--what to do? Where to go? I wish I could hide from this merry-go-round. Just get off--but that scares me. Can I stay alive and not be on a merry-go-round? Can I feel calm, centered, peaceful and still live? Do I have to die to get away from these feelings? I hope not.”

The merry-go-round gathered speed early this year. Cancer spread to her lungs and liver. On Jan. 20, she wrote, “I’ve decided to write my will. I feel scared--that then I’ll die.” Like a life without hope, she feared the act of writing her will was death disguised.

Sometimes, early in the morning, she would sit by the ocean, a couple blocks from her Redondo Beach office, to write down her thoughts before starting work. The journal, designed to help others, had become a quiet weapon against the violent attack taking place within her.

In January, she sold her practice but kept seeing a handful of clients. Since then, she, Michael and Michael’s brother and sister-in-law, Patrick Talbot and Pam Nichols, embarked upon a new business, Together Bound, an outdoors program for breast cancer survivors and their families.

Two weeks ago, Cathy’s condition worsened, and she was taken to Long Beach Memorial Hospital. Throughout the ordeal, Robin, too, kept a journal. On June 21, she sat outside the hospital after visiting, too weak to drive. She wrote on Post-it notes, the only paper she had.

“I’m ready to die. What do I do?” Cathy had asked.

“My heart stopped and I swallowed hard, trying not to cry,” Robin wrote. “ ‘Well, you say to God, “I’m ready to go home. Please come and get me. I’m ready to die.” ’ “

Robin lowered her head, and Cathy reached over to stroke her hair. They expressed their love for each other, but they didn’t say good-bye.

Cathy went home the following day, Sunday. On Monday, Robin visited again. At the house were family and friends. Cathy called them to her bedside and said, “I want to talk to all of you. I’m ready to die. Will you please tell God I’m ready to die, and will you please let go of me so I can die.”

They formed a circle around her bed and held hands. Each person spoke from the heart. Robin again expressed her love and said she would miss her but that her heart would continue to talk to Cathy’s heart. After all of them had spoken, Cathy kissed each as they left the room. When it was Robin’s turn, they held each other’s gaze. And this time, they said good-bye.

Cathy’s last journal entry was written sometime in June. “I don’t know the date,” she wrote. “It’s Friday. I feel disoriented, out of it, confused!! I know I’m dying. . . .”

That death was near was clear to everyone except Johnnie. “I always believed she’d pull out of it,” he says. “I never cried until she stopped breathing. That’s when it all hit me. My heart just dropped. I thought until then that God would lift her out of her bed, and we’d all be fine. But it never happened.”

Cathy Moore died at 10:58 p.m. June 24. She was 45 years old.

* Cathy Moore’s funeral will be at 1 p.m. Thursday at St. Lawrence Martyr Church, 1900 Prospect Ave., Redondo Beach. Donations can be sent to the Cathy Moore Memorial Fund c / o Together Bound, 1610 S. Catalina, Redondo Beach, CA 90277.