When Jane and I handed our book to an editor who had gone through breast cancer ten years before she asked why anyone would want to read about it. She had gone through it alone and hid it as much as she could because she felt it wasn't acceptable or accepted. She felt a sick person should hide, that they were a drain on the tribe, and the tribe did not want to see them in their vulnerability and pain.
I think now of how pregnant women were once hidden. Now, we celebrate their shape. I remember being out to lunch one day and sitting next to a woman whose clothing showed the beautiful shape of her pregnant form. I loved it and she was well along, but the slope, the curve is so beautiful, and I could know vicariously the life that simmered within her. It was beautiful to share, and brought up my own memories of pregnancy. In my day, we wore little girl clothes with smocking and such. Steve's mother made dresses for me and they were lovely, but I looked like a little girl rather than a Madonna in full bloom.
I was accepted in my illness and even celebrated and I want to share that with others through the book. It is too good not to share. I want to thank my doctors and you for all your help, hope, and care. I have decided that what the Edwards are doing is a good thing. It does bring up a great deal up for me though and that, too, I see as valuable for me, as release.
Many of us are from the years where a diagnosis of cancer was a death sentence. The two words mean the same in our mind, but times have changed. We have cures, and in the case of Elizabeth Edwards though she can't be cured, it seems she is enthusiastic and bubbling with life. None of us can be cured. We are all going to die. Maybe this puts that news out there in a way we need to see. I have turned around on it, and, of course, all of this is up to the two of them and their family and we now are all drawn in and perhaps given a chance to feel our own personal grieving through the intensity of their lives.
The blog kept me alive. This is their way. I applaud what they now give to us all.
Jane just emailed me that she is sick, so I am sitting with that and how now to twirl this day. Perhaps a walk is the way to begin and the day will unfold from there. The windows call to me. "We need washing," so I will see about making the eyes of the house more clear.