My Adventure with Cancer

As I write this, I have sitting in my draft posts an open letter to some puritanical nutcase regarding his take on the sexual revolution. The reason it is in draft stage is that, almost 500 words in (not counting footnotes) I still have a lot to say on the subject.

So why is it when today, upon learning that my uncle's cancer has returned, I was rendered completely speechless?

I found out via facebook, of all things. He created a page called My Adventure with Cancer to update his friends and family on his journey while he fights this disease for the second time. Even after the initial shock, when I'd managed to stop crying and calm myself down a bit, I couldn't bring myself to like the page. Of course I want to be kept up to date. Of course I want to be able to send messages of support. But - and this is going to sound stupid - I kept thinking my FB profile page is going to read Athena McCormick likes My Adventure with Cancer.

I told myself this was stupid. Everyone will understand that Facebook uses very limited language to talk about everything, no one is actually going to think that I like the fact that my uncle has cancer. So I decided to click the dreaded like button, to ensure that I'll get emails or updates will end up in my newsfeed or however the Hell Facebook does things these days. But when I went to do it, I still couldn't. I saw all the messages of support coming in from my uncle's friends, offering prayers and well-wishes and I couldn't think of anything to say. At least, nothing that seemed right. I'm not religious. I pray. I prayed every single day from the time I found out he had cancer the first time, until after the surgery he had to remove it. I had a little chant, so as not to leave anything out. That his surgery would work, that they would get all the cancer, that he would be ok. But offering my prayers to the universe-in-general to a Christian man who knows I don't share his faith seems wrong somehow, like taking a coal-powered train to an environmental protest. I thought, I should tell him I love him - and then I thought, how incredibly awkward would that be? My family love each other, of course we do, but we don't go around saying it all the time, and I kept thinking that if I tell him I love him suddenly, after hearing this news, it's going to look like I think he's going to die.

I've lost three family members to cancer, a much-loved aunt and both of my grandfathers. I imagine a world where every disease is cured, every war ended, any injury can be mended and we all die of cancer. What a horrible imagination I have.

Eventually, I came up with what I wanted to say and I said it - part of it. I put it out into the world and now I just have to hope that it was enough, that it was the right thing to say, that the occasion didn't require something more or less or different.

You would think, in a world like ours, so besieged by terrible diseases, there would be a protocol for this, an etiquette. That somewhere, a prim British lady with white gloves and an ugly hat should be telling young girls what to say when a family member is diagnosed - while the girls balance books on their heads and walk in circles around a reception room. You would think.

There's some comfort, perhaps, in the idea that we're all muddling through this, that no one knows how they're supposed to behave in these situations. And it's nice to know that I come from a family of fighters, of people who don't give up, of people who are determined to beat the odds.

It makes me proud. It really does.