Everyone who has ever loved someone who has been diagnosed with cancer knows
the moment they first stopped breathing normally.
You stop mid-breath, mid-expression or you suck in air like you've been punched in the gut. Sure, you may do it silently, quietly, secretively so your loved one doesn't freak out as you do your best to play the supportive wife, husband, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, lover, of the person whose life has now been forever changed.
Cancer steals quickly and slowly, silently, and in a rage of anguish and pain or a silent whisper of 'I'm so tired now'. It goes undetected for years and announces itself in a sterile office with a referral to an oncologist. It announces itself with an ache that won't leave, a rash that won't heal, or an annual test that should have been nothing but was not.
Cancer robs our loved ones of dignity and privacy and the right to say 'no I'm fine' because sometimes (thank you chemotherapy) everyone can see you're receiving treatment. Sometimes it's the sidelong glances to see which body part changed or is gone. We don't want to, but we do. And no matter how brave we are for our friends, for ourselves, there are always the people who know someone who died of cancer. The person who beat cancer five times, the person who had a scare and was fine. None of us know what to say, unless it's 'I had cancer, too.'
Not all cancer patients want to be coddled, some of them want to scream at it until the insidious nature of the treatments and the disease and the unfairness and the timing of all of it have left their lungs raw, their bodies wracked and limp, and yet somehow, now well -- but not always whole.
Today, I got the news that someone I love beyond words is cancer free and I realized that the entire time since first hearing their diagnosis I had been holding part of my breath, waiting. I learned from watching them with this that I don't have the guts to face this myself, in my own body, were I diagnosed. I learned that they are the strong one, the brave one, who lost part of their body, but accessed a reserve of strength that made me feel weak.
I have walked through fires, sure. Most of us have. But today. . .
Today, when finally crying with the release of breath I didn't know I had held, I realized that while the types of fire do not always matter, the fire of Cancer -- perhaps because it is so well known and its end too often made up of one dreaded word -- the fire of Cancer hands us a clock and a stopwatch and lets us wait until we can breathe fully once more.
I wrote most of this the same night I got the call -- June 26, 2015. For my wonderful friend who didn't want 'those' looks and who let me make all the horrid jokes we both needed to stay sane.