Like... we really need a cure.
I found myself telling someone today about how it actually, truly was in his final hours.
Normally I simply say- "My husband died.. Cancer."
And the "dying" part is elusive and abstract in the conversation. And that's ok.
I mean, it's not something that every conversation needs... the details.
But today- well, I don't know why, but the conversation led to details.
Details.
Like how he was so very tired and how he fought to stay coherent.
Details.
Like how he was in pain.. and how the pain was debilitating.
Details.
Like how the relentless sound of the death rattle almost drove me to distraction. Almost.
Details.
Cancer is a thief.
It steals.
It takes what is not rightfully its to have.
It stole his breath.
It stole his strength.
It stole the vitality he faced a day with.
We need a cure.
This week, all over my city and throughout the state and nation, families received the whiplash moment of diagnosis.
Multiple people discovered a lump, or a growth..
They had blood tests and scans.
They were seated in a doctors office and looked at grainy images of that heinous thief.
This week, people reconciled 'terminal' as a term that defined their coming days.
They cried and they held a beloved hand as the realisation settled.
We need a cure.
Today I stood before another coffin.
Cancer took another breath.
Cancer stole days that it had no claim over.
Over and over again... in hospital rooms. In lounge rooms.
Surrounded by loved ones.
In funeral homes and in cemeteries.
The cost of cancer was shouldered.
Oh....
We need a cure.
How?
How will it happen?
Well...
I resolutely, definitively hope against hope that it will happen soon.
That it will happen in this lifetime.
And because it looms... the enormity of loss and the thief that is cancer, I sometimes get overwhelmed with the... well, the enormity. And the loss.
Yes... especially the loss of his not being here.
And I need to fight back.
I need to find a way... forward.
I need to listen to the single determination that resides in my son's voices when they talk about a tomorrow where cancer is a chronic illness, not a terminal one.
We need a cure.
As the days and months and moments pass, I find it less viscerally painful to talk about the detail of those last moments.
I find it somewhat easier to face tomorrow without him.
I find tomorrow is going to be ok.
And in those ok tomorrows, where we laugh and find moments of joy...
In those days of fundraisers and functions.
In those moments.
In those days that approach us...
We need a cure.
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