Prayers for Pauline

My Canadian knitting buddy was diagnosed with breast cancer last week. We have been emailing back and forth for many years sharing all the heartache of losing our mothers. Lung cancer took hers just last year, leukemia took mine five years ago. We knitted to ease our stress at the overwhelming burden of wrapping up a life that is so interwoven with your own that you really are not sure how you will survive without them. We shared our knitting projects before Ravelry was born, the old fashioned way, by giving them away to each other as gifts. She managed to find the time to knit slippers for the patients at a nursing home where she volunteered her time while at the same time providing home care for her beloved "maman". The prayer shawl I cast on for her the night I read her news is humble by our usual knitting standards but I need it done now. Her surgery is in a few weeks and treatment will follow soon after. It is a mile a minute project that has a good soothing rhythm to its pattern. It is all the in the threes. Knit three, purl three, say a prayer, repeat.