Canciversary: on becoming warriors

If you've experienced cancer -- your own or that of a loved one -- then you, too, know this way that it creates its own time, its own calendar of memorable, dreaded dates.

And so yesterday, I shared these words on Facebook:

Four years ago we were still stunned and horrified at this visitation into our lives, standing at the brink of what felt like a chasm, staring mortality in the face.  

Four years ago we stopped being who we'd been before and became something else, something fragile yet something stronger.

We became warriors.

We became the focus of so much love and support from all directions that it was almost blinding in its intensity.

We became the recipients of meals and visits and kindness, and even once, at Trader Joe's, a hug from a stranger who also was hairless from chemo.

I say We, but never do I forget that it wasn't my body that suffered this, although over and over I wished it, to take this misery on myself to save my Joe from it. Instead I tried to be good, I wrote everything down. I remembered everything.

Of course, my body suffered something, just not cancer, and I think often about the lessons and traumas of that time, how they might have taken up, built up, residence. It makes me think of coral and how they build, minuscule daily accretions adding up to a reef.

Living through the experience of cancer is like coral-- it's building something you're not aware of until you're above it somehow, looking down from the perspective of time, if you get it.

Once, leaving a club when lymphoma was two years in the past, a drunk old friend called out, 

"Joey, I'm so glad you lived!"

We laughed at the absurdity of that ringing out across the midnight street, bouncing off the wet pavement. 

But damn, it's true, isn't it? So glad he lived. So glad he recovered not just from the cancer itself, but from the ravages of chemo. He is a hero in his own way, living, riding, winning.

Warriors, we live with this, with this knowledge that we fought and survived, where others, so many others and some very close to us, have fought and fallen.   

I wish it had never happened, but since it did, then I keep its memory. We live its calendar, marking out anniversaries, living day after day.

Warriors.

XX