It is said that there are only two stories: A man goes on a
journey and A stranger comes to town. When I talk to people who want to write
about their caregiving experiences I ask them, “Which one is your story?” There
is no right answer, of course. Cancer is a journey that men and women go on
whether they are the ill person or the well person. And certainly Cancer is a
stranger that comes to your town.
In my story John was a stranger who came into my life many
years ago. I was a stranger in his life too. After years of correspondence he
called one day. Would I come to his school? We became friends. And that lasted
for years. Then more strangers came:
romance, seduction and desire. The erotic stranger and a romantic journey. We took
the trip. Wildly unprepared. Risking everything. And then another stranger—cancer—into our
life. I’d met cancer long ago but this
one roared in to our lives. Still, where
cancer had devastated me before this one brought a strange healing. Yes it came
with so much fear, but fear is not a stranger, rather my familiar through
troublesome companion.
John certainly is on
a journey with colon cancer. Life, death, sickness and health are all rising
like monuments around us. He is on an emotional journey too. Every test, every
treatment has to be met, but these strangers bring things—an insight, a feeling,
a friendship.
If you are having a love affair with cancer what does it
feel like to you this year? A journey you have just begun or one that has you
standing on tippy-toe hoping that is the next town coming soon? Or is cancer
your dark and not so handsome stranger? Is it making you a stranger to your
loved ones? That is always the danger. Or is cancer showing you that you were
once a stranger to yourself but now you know just who you really are?