Cancer: A Family Battle

      My experience with cancer began about 30 years ago and I deal with it, in some form or another, every day. My family, including my grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, has been inundated by the scourge of cancer. It has taken husbands and wives and children. It has broken hearts, destroyed finances, and ruined lives. My family has held together through all these tough times but it has definitely impacted every one of us. The one's who are left are wounded, bruised, some lost. But in some ways it has brought us all closer. It made us realize how short life can be. And believe me, life can be very short for some.

      There were two people on either side of my family that were so full of life, love, and energy that it caught the entire family off guard when cancer came into their lives. My Aunt Gen was the funniest, loudest, and wildest of all my aunts. She would chase us down for kisses and then bite our noses. She loved to pinch and tease but we always loved it. She was a bundle of unstoppable energy. In 1978 My 30 year old Aunt Genevieve was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. The energy faded. Two years later she died. She had two kids under 13. A son and a daughter that would lose their mother before they made it to 16. Their father would divorce her before she died. I don't know if, to this day, that my cousins have fully recovered from the shock and awe their family experienced in those 2 years. They are fractured and coping, but in no way whole.

      My cousin Patty was another unbelievable loss. She was a beautiful, vivacious, young newlywed. Most of the family had moved to Florida a few years earlier but they all lived within a half of an hour to each other.  She had just had her baby daughter in 1978 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer right after her birth.  She was treated with chemo and radiation and died a year and a half later.   Patty was loved by all and was always close with her mother and father. She left a teen age brother,a sister and her new baby and husband also. She was the youngest of all of our losses, she was 27.

      My grandmother May was also an early victim of breast cancer. She had moved to Florida from New Jersey with my grandfather Tom and most everyone on that side of the family followed them down. She had breast cancer in the early 70's and had a mastectomy. My father would always tell me that my Grandma was very tough. He always told the story of harassing her to hurry with ironing his shirt, and she took the iron to his chest. She didn't leave a mark but he definitely didn't rush her again. To her grandkids she was great. She was a caretaker and would rarely yell at us. My grandmother and grandfather were very close. Not long after moving to Florida her cancer returned. She was actually in the hospital when my cousin Patty was diagnosed with her cancer. It was less than a year after her death, my grandfather died. It was a heart attack that had killed him but I felt that he had died from loneliness.

      My Poppy on the other side of my family had moved to other coast of Florida. My family followed them. We lived with them for a while until my father and mother found jobs and a house. My grandfather was a volunteer fireman and loved to show us around the fire station. Sometimes he would bring us there to show us the alligators that lived behind the station. We would throw marshmallows to them and watch in wonder as they would gobble one after another. My grandfather was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1972. He lost most of his colon and was fitted with a colostomy bag. Three years later he died.

       The latest cancer tragedy that has hit our family may be the worst of all. My aunt Arlene and uncle Tommy were a great couple. The two had been married for 48 years. They had raised four of their own children and took care of foster children too. The two of them were like two peas in a pod. They had not moved down to Florida so I didn't see them very often, but when they came down it was always great to see them. My aunt was so sweet to us and uncle Tommy was always joking and laughing. The two of them would both be diagnosed with lung cancer within a six months of each other, and passed away 9 days apart. I can only imagine how hard it would be to lose both of your parents one right after another. I'm sure my cousins are still healing from this great loss. This only happened last year, so it still hurts to think about it. As with all of my relatives that have passed, we will miss them all.

      It has been very hard for all of us to lose all of these loving mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers. But for me personally, nothing can be worse than losing my own father. He was in his 50's, not too young. It's been over 10 years since his death but it still hurts. I think about the time that he has missed watching my daughters grow. I think about how I needed him to lean on, talk to, celebrate with. But he's gone. Lung cancer took him in less than three weeks. He was diagnosed with untreatable cancer. I remember sitting in the hospital listening to my mother tell me this. I was struck how we didn't get hysterical or cry our eyes out, we were in shock and disbelief. So all we could do was sit, watch and wait. His pain medication was so powerful within two weeks he didn't seem to know who I was. He didn't even beat the doctor's estimate. He had died seventeen days later.

      It is always hard to lose our loved ones. We never expect for people to be taken away from us prematurely. Like a thief, cancer steals them away from us. It destroys our families person by person, leaving a whole in all of our lives. It takes young and old, the healthy and the ill. My family has weathered a storm that has stolen our loved ones. It picked them up and took them away. Now all we can do is pick up the pieces. We can clean up the mess and hope we can be prepared for the next storm. People always tell me that they don't think we will ever cure cancer. I hope they are wrong.