Backgrounder: I hadn't written anything before this piece for a while. I usually write optimistic "pretty" pieces. I was in a bad mood and decided to channel that anger through my writing. The idea was to create a piece that was completely uncharacteristic.
The cancer card.
Pretty with flowers and shiny writing. A quant little poem that sounds so typically hallmark… An attempt to bring a little sunshine into the poor soul’s life that has to live with this disease or worse still try and over come it.
Just looking at the card you couldn’t tell that Alice’s every moment must be tainted with the thought that her kids will live without a mother if it gets the best of her.
Looking at the card, you wouldn’t know that her hair has fallen out and that she wears a wig because on good days.. days when she has enough strength to walk outdoors, kids look at her like she’s stepped out of a horror movie.
This card with its bright colors and cheerful commentary...
Everyone’s pathetic attempts to make comfortable an ugly situation.
We’re a nation addicted to fighting.. we fight everything.. we want to battle ignorance, combat poverty and of course fight diseases. Its Alice’s job to do that for us. We live vicariously through her. We write in this card not because we really care but because we want to tell her story later on. Who wants to hear the story of a cancer patient that didn’t make it? A cancer patient who withered away defeated by a disease that we are miles away from understanding. We want the opposite. We want to tell the world how she overcome a monster. A tale of human perseverance and struggle.
Alice is our martyr.
She is the venue by which we allow ourselves to be human.
We drop money into an envelope and on a superficial level hope the flowers will put a smile on her face.
See Alice... the cancer patient.... our martyr....
looking at this card.. this sorry.....“sweet” empty gesture..
she wouldn’t know that someone actually contemplated pocketing some of her gift fund to buy dessert after lunch. She wouldn’t know that I could think of absolutely nothing more horrific than being in her shoes right now. She wouldn’t know that everyone signing this card thanks god its her and not them.. not their sister, mother or wife.
Poor dying,
weak,
fragile,
Cancer infested Alice…
1 comment:
Awesome writing! Moving and powerful...on a day, that schools across the nation marked the memory of Terry Fox by continuing his dream to raise funds for cancer research, you raise an interesting point. There is victory, yes, in overcoming the ego. There is victory too in a full envelope of money.
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