terminal illness of family member/spouse

The Cutesy FaceBook Breast Cancer Awareness Meme


Last week at some point I noticed that my female FB friends were posting colors as their status updates.

Blue. Black. Pink.

I saw only single colors. None of the “orange with lacey trim” updates. If I’d seen the latter, I would have realized what they were talking about despite the fact that I have donned undergarments only a handful of times in the last two years.

Puzzled and on the verge of finding it really annoying, I posted a query in my own status update bar and received several private messages informing me that it was a trick that we women were playing on the men.

Psst … post your bra color and they won’t know what we are on about … tee hee hee. Pass it on.

Only one of the messages I received informed me of the “raising awareness for breast cancer” aspect of the meme. Just one. So much for raising awareness because I think quite a few women playing along had no idea why they were supposed to be doing this. They thought it was a neat in-joke on the men who followed their feeds because as anyone who ever played the game “telephone” knows, passed along messages drop parts of or garble context as they travel.

Once I knew the purpose, I spent a whole 5 seconds contemplating it before going back to updating about me. I had no bra color to update, that’s true, but I am not kindly disposed towards awareness campaigns that are never ending, as breast cancer is, and I still have issues with the whole “raising awareness” for certain diseases and not others.

For example, my late husband died because of a genetic metabolic disorder. There are about a half dozen metabolic disorders and nearly all of them are life-limiting in gruesome, family destroying ways. They are rare. Which is their bad. And no famous people have been afflicted by them that I am aware of, which means no one can start a campaign that will touch the hearts of the masses. No fun little “remember the genetically afflicted” FB meme’s for the victims of metabolic syndromes, alas.

I have noticed, perhaps you have to, that diseases afflicting the famous in some way are the ones that most people hear the most about. Or diseases that are noticeable and inflict hardship. On men. Losing breasts is hard to cover up, so to speak and it strikes at the “heart” of how women are judged on the attractiveness/desirability scale – by men. If women were being afflicted with a cancer no one could see, or that wasn’t connected to men’s sexual needs in some way that doesn’t make them squeamish, we wouldn’t hear a thing about it. It wouldn’t matter. Breasts matter to men. So breast cancer is a big deal. Cervical cancer and ovarian cancer are inside and icky, and men don’t want to know about anything below the navel save that there is a hole they can stick themselves in, ergo no walks, ribbons or year round assaulting awareness campaigns for cancers of the naughty bits or plumbing.

Rob’s late wife had melanoma. Do you know what color the ribbon is? Black. Nothing frou-frou or girly or uplifting about that color or even the tiniest bit hopeful for melanoma victims. Do you hear much about melanoma except for the yearly half-assed media censure against tanning salons that usually come out around the time that little high school girls are getting ready for spring prom?

No. You don’t.

Heart disease actually kills the most women every year while we are being encouraged to believe that very moderate exercise is okay and that fat should be a beauty standard.

Lung cancer is slowly moving up on the killer of women scale. Did you know that either?  Probably not. Lungs, unfortunately for them, are hidden underneath the most important of female assets and therefore, don’t count.

Someone on my FB friend’s list was upset by the “backlash” against the campaign. She thought we were heartless people not fit to be good friends and play along because you never know who might someday be stricken. That’s her opinion. I can see why she might feel that way. I offered my experience with the meme and was basically told to “fuck off” by some of her friends, and so I did. In the yoga sutras, Patanjali advises use of the fourth key in some instances and this was one of them. But pretending that something was a good idea or properly executed when it clearly wasn’t is not the way to go about promoting anything but discord and does more to turn people away from awareness efforts than not.

I didn’t post my lack of bra status. It was dumb regardless of the true reason though probably not as dumb as Farmville.

Coy outreach programs = advertising fails, but that’s just my opinion, as always.

The One Where I Kept My Mouth Shut


Dee attended a pool party Saturday. It was the birthday celebration of two little school friends who she has known since kindergarten. They are twins. I have gotten to know their mother a bit over time and when she let me know last week that she was going to be flying to Ontario on an early flight the next day because her father is in the last stage of cancer, I naturally volunteered to help out in any way she needed. I’ve been there. I know. I offered. It’s simple because there isn’t much to think about really.

While the kids were swimming under the supervision of the twin’s dad, two lifeguards and a couple of other parents who wanted to help out as well, I sliced hotdog buns. At some point, things were set up enough to allow the conversation to flow past panicked preparation to topics of the day. Twins’ Mom related her frazzled shopping adventures of the previous couple of days and remarked that at one point she became irrationally angry with a cashier who was more interested in socializing with her customers than checking them out. She realized that it was just the stressful nature of getting ready for her daughters’ party while planning to leave to be with her parents and siblings that was making her react as she did but knowing isn’t always enough to quell feelings in the moment. She apparently mentioned it to her primary care provider not long after it happened because she went on to say,

“I was told that I reacted that way because I had started the grieving process and that if it got worse, I should come back in.”

There are so many layers of myth in that one statement that I almost couldn’t wrap my own thoughts up quickly enough to silence myself. Two years ago, okay maybe even last year, if someone had said that, I would have been all over it. Instead I just smiled and said,

“You’re normal.”

Because that is one of my stock answers where upheaval, tragedy, adversity and death are concerned.

The others?

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

Not verbatim, of course. I flush them out with descriptors and if I am feeling particularly reckless and under the influence of empathy, I might share a personal story with as little advice or judgement as possible.

Why?

Because I know now that all people want is to be heard. Even when they ask for advice specifically, they are not looking for anything more than someone to hear, echo and tell them that they are normal and all will eventually work out. And you know what? For most people, everything will be okay – albeit different. Very few of us lack the resiliency to right ourselves after life capsizes our boats or destiny re-charts our direction without regard to our wants.

I know it’s hard to believe. Society these days is such a nanny, telling us that there is a therapy, self-help group or pill for everything. Some of us forget, in the face of unrelenting peer pressure, that human beings are designed to overcome emotional bumps, bruises and breaks because if we hadn’t been Darwinian law would have taken care of us long, long ago.

We are victims of our ability to be introspective and logically analytic, I guess. If we’d remained merely animals, we wouldn’t be able to second guess ourselves and we’d take crisis as it came and for what it was, reminding ourselves that we were hardly unique and that life goes on even if it sucks sometimes. We are nothing special after all, that bad times should pass over our house for those more deserving.

So, I am sorry you’re normal, but in spite of that, everything is going to be okay. Really.

Anniversaries, Firsts and The Privileged Few


Yesterday was the first anniversary of my dad’s death. I knew Mom had taken the day off, but between appointments and whatnot, I didn’t get an opportunity to call her until the late afternoon after Dee got home from school. She sounded shaky but assured me she was okay.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said. “I did okay today. Went out to the cemetery in the morning and had lunch with Auntie before her physio. People have been calling on and off, and I saw neighbors. It wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be. Now I have all my firsts done.”

Getting through “the firsts” is a big deal. I actually didn’t know that the assorted holidays and anniversaries of this and that had a designation until Will had been dead for a half a year or more. I am not sure I really needed to know it either. I have learned a lot of terminology that is death or widow specific that probably hasn’t aided me as much as it was intended to, but that is another story. People are always proud of themselves for having crossed the mile marker which is year one. Year two is a whole other matter, but I didn’t mention that. Another thing I don’t think is helpful is telling survivors about the pitfalls to come because, in my opinion, it can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy situations. Best to let others go through their own ebb and flow without planting any seeds.

Rob inquired after Mom as we sat having tea after dinner and dishes were done. Tuesday is late dinner because of Dee’s dance, and we got home to find that Rob had supper waiting. He even did the dishes after – that’s a digression, isn’t it? I related Mom’s pleasure at having jumped the year mark and the fact that no one had forgotten her on this anniversary.*

“No one called me,” he said.

“Me neither,” I replied, “and I even managed to not remind Mom that she not only didn’t call me on the one year but she forgot the date and mentioned it a week or more after the fact.”

“Well,” Rob mused, “I’d kind of alienated all my in-laws at that point by marrying you.”

Before the first year was up. A point of fact that is less relevant as time goes on. Though it doesn’t completely go away, the fact that Rob and I continue on in spite of the hand-wringing makes the objections irrelevant in the face of reality.

“Well, they were all gracious about it none the less and seem okay now except for Indy. But she has issues of her own that are probably more at the root of things.”

One of Shelley’s sisters is a cross between CB and BabySis. She has never been anything but kind to me and Dee but when we have been out of sight and earshot, she has wailed and railed a bit. She is one of those people who no matter how removed she is from the epicenter of tragedy, will try to make it all about her anyway. It’s hard wiring but a hard childhood and substance abuse don’t enhance the trait  – in a desirable manner anyway.

This got us to talking about last days. The whole death-bed scene. And Rob brought up my personal fingernail on blackboard issue – the people who don’t show up because they want to remember the dying person “as they were”.

“Who the fuck do they think they are that they get dibs on the pristine memories?” I asked. It was a rhetorical because Rob just smiled and shrugged. We’ve had this particular conversation before and with no satisfactory conclusions drawn by the end.

At one point the memories drifted past the popular idea that the dying should be treated to a running monologue of non-stop chatter from the bedside babysitters. I understand the rationale. We live people harbor the belief that the dying person is alone, frightened and finds comfort in being connected to the land of the living even if they can’t interact or acknowledge. I wonder about that myself. We are told that people are waiting for guides to come and lead them away, but what if those last hours are filled with important instructions or lessons and all we are doing is making it harder for the person to pay attention? And what if dying is as much work as every other aspect of life?

Rob assigned shifts to Shelley. Her nephew played the guitar for instance. Her mom read to her from a book on proper nutrition for cancer patients.

“I wonder what Shelley must have been thinking then,” Rob said.

I actually just finished writing about this in the last chapter of the memoir I was working on. Will’s brain damage was so extensive that he simply couldn’t receive or make sense of information in any form. I didn’t know this for a fact until the autopsy report months later, but I suspected it, so I just didn’t bother to speak. I carried on long conversations with him in my head. If you’d have walked in on just he and I, you would have wondered at the utter silence and the fact that all I ever did was rub his chest or hold his hand. But my reasoning was that he was just as likely to read my mind as he was to hear and understand what I was saying.

Dee brings home a reading book every night that she must read and discuss with one of us. Her current discussion obsession is making what the teacher told them was “self-connections”.

“It’s important to make self-connections,  Mom,” she reminded me tonight when I tried to ask her about something else in the story.

But she’s right. Self-connections are where we learn and grow.

*Not sadiversary or deathversary or any other of the Hallmarkish terms.