When life deals you the cancer card, make your own deck with special role models to help you remember how strong a person with cancer can be. Sometimes little reminders to ourselves in our best handwriting can help us through a rough patch.
PUBLISHED August 15, 2018
Felicia Mitchell is a poet and writer who makes her home in southwestern Virginia, where she teaches at Emory & Henry College. She was diagnosed with Stage 2b HER2-positive breast cancer in 2010. Website: www.feliciamitchell.net
Let me tell you about M. She was an older student working on a Ph.D. after raising her family. Before she finished, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Juggling classes and chemo, determined to write that dissertation, she died before she could finish her degree. I remember vividly when I visited her once, she picked up a stack of bills and laughed. The bills were so astronomical, she said, all she could do was laugh. You know that cosmic laugh Buddhists write about? M. had it.
Here is what I want you to do. Get out your favorite pen and a stack of index cards. If you are crafty, try markers or watercolor pencils. Clear a place on your dining room table. Turn on some music or open the windows so you can hear birds.
N. was a great aunt. She had lived a tempestuous life in her early days, dressing as a flapper. This was before she died of metastatic breast cancer. N. was an intelligent woman who had gone to college at 16 only to leave to pursue a traditional path of following an important man around the world. While I remember her drinking too much late in life, I also remember her study. She was the first person I knew who had a whole room – a sun room, in fact – devoted to books and a desk, with photos from her travels and loved ones neatly arranged. I played with that study the way I played with her jewelry box.
Here is what I want you to do. Get out your favorite pen and a stack of index cards. If you are crafty, try markers or watercolor pencils. Clear a place on your dining room table. Turn on some music or open the windows so you can hear birds.
N. was a great aunt. She had lived a tempestuous life in her early days, dressing as a flapper. This was before she died of metastatic breast cancer. N. was an intelligent woman who had gone to college at 16 only to leave to pursue a traditional path of following an important man around the world. While I remember her drinking too much late in life, I also remember her study. She was the first person I knew who had a whole room – a sun room, in fact – devoted to books and a desk, with photos from her travels and loved ones neatly arranged. I played with that study the way I played with her jewelry box.
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