I Sing the Body ill

It has been my privilege recently to get close to not one, but two, cancer survivors. Now these men are so interesting, fascinating and just plain flahoolick* that being a cancer survivor isn't even among the Top 5 most interesting things about them.


And yet.

Watching them both dogged by the spectre of new illness this week I am just..well, I'm gobsmacked. As someone with 3 chronic conditions I thought I knew from coping and bodily gracelessness, about simultanously caring for yet hating the machine-your most intimate machine-that is failing you. But apparently, like a lot of BIG LIFE LESSONS, there is always more to learn and admire. The grim set of a jaw when the shooting pain comes, the sigh, then the John Wayne Handbook stoic picking up a burden thought long since left behind. If it's true that the only way out is through, and I believe that it is, I'm glad I have these two to lead the way.


These were my thoughts as I watched and tried to help where I could (and where I was allowed to do so) and then when I stumbled home after I found this on one of my favorite blogs (the incomparable Nightmare Brunette):


"I wanted to stare uninterrupted and touch, not because his scars were freakish or ugly but because they were remarkable. The success of his healing was astonishing. I wanted to feel connected to it, the strength and cleverness that had gone into keeping him beautiful."


That's really what I wanted to say. What she said.




*Flahoolick-an Irish word meaning openhanded, generous, expansive i.e. something inherently cool in and of itself. A Ferris Wheel lit up at night? Flahoolick.