A Sister Whose Suffering Takes Her Deeper Into Life
The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 22, 2005
Maryellen Nerz-Stormes of Strafford was selected as the archdiocese's May Queen earlier this month based on an essay about her that was written by her sister, Maggie Nerz of Fairmount. As queen, she had the honor of crowning the statue of Mary as part of the Archdiocesan May Procession in Center City. Nerz-Stormes, 46, is a senior lecturer in chemistry at Bryn Mawr College. A condensed version of the contest-winning essay, "Why My Sister Should be May Queen/' follows.
My sister Mary and I are two of seven children, she being the oldest girl and me being the youngest, with 11 years in between us. Because of her position as oldest girl, Mary was often called upon by our mother to help mother the younger children
Besides baby-sitting us and changing our diapers, she taught us to pray, disco dance, told us about high school and college, took us to movies and out to eat, and gave us advice about our own lives. Since Mary was a straight-A student who went on to get her Ph.D. in organic chemistry and a natural athlete who played golf, field hockey, and basketball, she was someone we as little girls really wanted to be.
Throughout every phase of my life, through high school, through college, through graduate school, she has guided me and given of herself for me. In college, she helped me decide about where to go to graduate school. In graduate school, she let me live with her family and gave me a car to drive. In my working life, she has given advice and support.
Like the Blessed Mother, whose love is often an invisible force of support, my sister's care is like the air I breathe, always there in abundance, whether I know and appreciate it or not.
The most current chapter in my sister's life and the life of our relationship is perhaps the most poignant reason why she should be May Queen. My sister was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer four years ago. When it was discovered, the cancer had already spread from her breast to her lymph nodes, bones, and now brain. She has · undergone aggressive chemotherapy, receiving two drugs a week, every week, since her diagnosis. She has had the two tumors in her brain treated with radiation twice.
Throughout her illness, she has kept her job as a teacher at Bryn Mawr College, teaching hundreds of students organic chemistry while , suffering with the many side effects the different drugs have caused. She has taught with constant stomach problems, with her fingernails falling off, with her bones aching, with ~he permanent loss of her hair, and with the constant anxiety, and days of hopelessness brought on by fighting an incurable disease.
My sister has been a fearless and active participant in her treatment, realistically facing the implications of her prognosis and working with her doctor to make the· choices that will extend her life the longest. She has taught herself oncology and how to read her own scans, reads medical journals voraciously, and researches the different treatments out there to the best of her ability. Her sole purpose is to extend her life for her two sons, a blessed mother in her own right, indeed. On top of all this, she has taken what she has learned to advocate for others, and seriously sees this as part of her mission.
Like the Blessed Mother's famous "Yes!" to the request made by the Father to bring Jesus into the world, my sister has also said "Yes" to the call of God by letting her suffering take her to a deeper experience of life. She has spent more time with her sons, reading with them, advocating for them, mentoring them, loving them. She has joined her church choir, volunteered at a free clinic, taught her students how to knit, become an extraordinary and prolific painter, and is working on a book about her experiences. She has translated her more palpable sense of lack of certainty about the future into what she calls "cancer time," an excuse to give more abundantly and generously; more impulsively and fearlessly. If you know my sister, you know that a gift of flowers, a hand-knit scarf, a b1·ownie, a donation of time or money, a hug, a kind word, a direct and caring look in the eye, a loving note, is probably in your future.
In my own relationship with the Blessed Mother, I often meditate on the mere fact that Mary was asked to bring a child into the world and then asked to share him with all of humanity, and then asked to watch him not only die, but be killed. I often focus on the level of giving up the Blessed Mother was called to live out, and I try to comfort myself by thinking of Mary's sacrifice, when I struggle, as my sister does, with not wanting to give up the smaller things I am asked to give up.
I think I was most drawn to writing this essay because of a conversation my sister and I had just two nights ago. We were talking about the month of May and the Race for the Cure and the breast-cancer awareness so much of us hear about through the media. We were talking about what it means to be a survivor. According to the · media-driven world, a survivor is someone who has defeated cancer, a blond woman with a tan who is bounding off the tennis courts, triumphant over death. My bald sister is not the picture of a survivor the media want to advertise, yet she is the ultimate survivor to me. · So much of what we are called as Christians, particularly as Catholics, is countercultural, and I think my sister's form of being a survivor is countercultural, even and especially within the world of cancer, where it should be most valued.
So much like the Blessed Mother, whose unhesitant "Yes!" changed the history of the world without anything in it for herself, my sister has said the same kind of "Yes!" again and again and has redefined surviving for me, and hopefully the other people who have had the luck to experience her bright-shining, never-dimming light of a life.
Maryellen Nerz-Stormes (right) of Strafford was named the archdiocese's May Queen on the recommendation of her sister, Maggie Nerz (left) , who wrote of her older sibling’s early guidance and recent struggles with breast cancer.
