The Cancer. . .


The news was devastating. My 28 year old daughter has been diagnosed with breast cancer. This isn’t my mom or grandma or someone older. That’s what we expect you know, that cancer is something that happens to someone older, who has had a chance at life, lived it to the max. It’s not supposed to happen to our kids, or grandkids, our little sisters or the kid next door.

And yet it does. It strikes illogically, without prejudice, without caring about the unspeakable effects it has on the families it invades. It cares not about age, race, gender, sexual orientation. It’s the ultimate equal opportunity disease, reaching out with greedy arms and grappling fingers to snag the next victim.

I see it as the invader, I truly do; the insidious visitor who comes to attack, sometimes on the sly, sometimes charging boldly forward. It is a bully, belligerently forceful, its goal—another life.

You will not have this life cancer, you will not take my lovely daughter from me, her husband and babies. We will fight you on your own terms, aggressively, using any means available to us. Yes cancer, we will meet you where you live, hiding away in the breast of my baby. You do not stand a chance you know. You will surrender. . .