Like an unexpected snow, the pronouncement fell from her lips. I cried as though I had just found out that someone dear to me had died. Inconsolable at first, I assumed those great fat tears flowed from the sheer fright of a disease that has no cure. A decade later, I know my sorrow was more about wondering how to proceed toward the half-century mark without the woman I used to be. Oddly, nobody else seemed to notice she had vanished. Not even the person who delivered the news to me in much the same way as my mother might give me a ring to tell me that a childhood friend or a distant relative has died – reverent, hushed, kindly.

If I close my eyes, I can just discern the shadow of my former self standing up and walking out the door, offended by the nice Breast Cancer Navigator informing my husband and me that I had cancer. Me? With cancer?

She spoke in a quiet conspiratorial whisper, the way we quietly speculate about the cause of a death when all the evidence points to hard living. On and on she talked, as if trying to soothe us even as she filled our ears with fear. So many scary words.  Then with a brusque not-to-worry she stressed that what we were hearing that day in her dimly lit office was not a death sentence.

Not really.

Later, I would Google something by somebody who said cancer was a blessing that had bestowed her with the gift of two distinct lives – the one before cancer and the one forever changed by the diagnosis. She said the second life would be much better than the first. I cannot say life post-diagnosis has been or is better – it is just different.

For me and the woman I used to be, cancer became the scariest thing in my life, because, like every scary thing that actually happens, it had never crossed my mind. I still waste precious minutes fretting over things that most likely will never happen. But cancer did happen, and I remember wanting everyone to feel as sorry for me as I did for myself and howl about the unfairness of it all. I wanted a no-holds-barred pity party. I could not have predicted the impact of the let-down, placated by people I considered  friends who said I had nothing to worry about, my being so strong and someone to whom God would give only as much as I could handle and nothing more. I was told I should be thankful because I had the “good cancer.” I was on the pig’s back, beyond lucky to be the beneficiary of what they deemed a fine consolation prize, a veritable bonus – the boob job following the amputation of the right breast I wish I still had. I was even congratulated on still looking like myself – you’d never know you had cancer –  and five minutes later chided by someone who barely knew me when she found out I was not “doing chemo” as if it were something akin to laundry or a pile of dishes or sit-ups. There was the woman who told me to just get on with it and “put my big girl pants on,” with a nod to God because, you know, I could handle what He had given me. There were others who fled, afraid to utter the C word in my presence. I made excuses for them, guilty that I made them uncomfortable, showing up in the world every day, reminding them that cancer gets people like the person I used to be, people like them.

Thus a kind of dance with cancer – if I don’t mention it, they won’t mention it, and maybe it will go away. Or maybe it won’t, and then what? Will we swallow the words we are too scared to say and instead spit out cliches about doing battle and platitudes about the power of positive thinking? It’s trickier, I suspect, to ignore the recurrence of cancer, to feign indifference to it, once it has been roused from its slumber.

It’s difficult. All of it. For everyone involved.  In those weeks following diagnosis, I could have been kinder to those who showed up for me, even if they didn’t know what to say or do. They showed up. They held me up with  love – unconditional and fierce – my daughter, my late husband, my best friends, my family near and far. Consumed with fear and bitterness, I know I was hard to handle.  I know I didn’t thank them enough. My cancer changed their lives too.

---

Life is just less certain, following cancer. Often, I find myself holding my breath, a tiny bit afraid of what might be around the corner. The roller-coaster cliche still does the job. You know the refrain.

First, the arduous climb towards an intense blue sky, the anxious chatter and nervous giggling subsiding all around you. At the top, breath suspended, you wait for the world to fall out beneath you. Not yet. Next, a sudden plunge at shocking speed. Might you plummet to your death? Not yet. There are more unpredictable twists and turns to come, above and below. White-knuckled, clinging to the bar, you only half-believe there is enough life in the clickety-clacking, old machinery to set you back on solid ground. Suddenly it’s over. You are free to return to the midway, albeit a little green around the gills and unsteady on your feet. As he helps you out of the car, the weather-beaten carnie winks. Only he knows you aren’t as confident as you used to be.

“I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”