Cancer

Thus far, I've been lucky, I guess. People close to me have been touched by cancer, but not consumed by it. Tumors found early and nipped in the bud. Malignant cells in bodies  well into their 90s. I've seen it dramatized in movies, retold in novels and speeches, but I never had to see it up close and person. That is until this past weekend.

Last Sunday, I saw a family member for the first time in about six months. She had been battlling cancer for nearly a decade, but I had pegged her as a shoe-in to land on the side of the survivors. She had always been strong. A modern day Amazon. Towering over the other female folk by nearly a foot and having a take-no-prisoners attitude to match. With a big boisterous family, she was energy personified. Which is what made it all the more startling to see her.

Just over 40 years old, she shuffled into the room,  wearing her own skin like it was two sizes too big. Her already short hair had receded as did the flesh around eyes and  her mouth as she kept a smile fixed on her face. Seeing her, a sickness, or maybe it was an extreme sorrow, swept over me. She looked as if she was already halfway onto the next world.

It was whispered to me that she was stage 4 now. The cancer had reached her bone.

Over the course of the night, I struggled with the competing feelings of wanting to look away and being completely drawn to her. As I was working to negotiate my own emotions,  her husband got up to dance. He took her in his arms and floated her across the dance floor as if she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Because, I think, to him she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

 As hard as the whole night was to swallow, as harrowing as it was to peronally see the cruelty of cancer for the first time, I must also acknowledge the flip side: I'd also never seen a love like that before.