No Bets, No Threats, Just Saying

I can’t seem to just copy and paste a generic thing. I want people to know that I have read the message and that it has touched my heart. If they just left it at that I would be fine, but it spirals into ‘I am betting that…’ and there is a number three, four or maybe six people who will respond. The writer apparently knows which friends or family it will be. They are perhaps gearing themselves up for disappointment in the lack of numbers. It feels more like blackmail at times, that unspoken something that if the word ‘Done’ doesn’t appear in the comments box, a reader is not compassionate enough, heartless or too busy to read to the end. We are manipulators at times, aren’t we?

I am compassionate, not heartless and usually read to the end. Sometimes the ‘I am betting that…’ makes me stop reading.

So, in response, I wrote my own post…

Cancer

It wasn’t personal you understand

I didn’t leaf through a file

And choose you

I just took advantage

Of a mutation, a door left open

Just for a fraction of a second

I didn’t appear threatening

So your body didn’t stop me as0

I disabled the burglar alarm

Just a squatter with

My feet up on the sofa

I left a few muddy footprints

It’s in my nature to replicate

To propagate the species

So I seeded myself

A smaller, less malignant me

Grew first here, then there

And then everywhere

The chemotherapy was

Rough on us both

I had to lie down for a while

Size is no indication of power

Fury is sometimes invisible

Science doesn’t have all the answers

The battle was short

In dying you killed me

We both lost

There are around 375,000 new cancer cases in the UK every year. There isn’t a gender bias. No parts of the body are immune. Older people have less resilience. Half of those diagnosed survive which means half don’t. Women do seem to fight harder, but there again, when do they not? So many organizations, thanks to supporters, work to find out how to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. But still, some slip through the net. It is a hard thing to sit beside someone you love, watching them waste away gradually, and you powerless to help. Take a moment to celebrate the lives of the fighters, the ones who lose the battle and the ones who survive.

You need to know it's a personal thing for me. Feel free to repost or share this if you wish.

The poem is mine, written sometime after the death of my brother, Michael, from cancer.

I can remember one sunny day, in a hospice in Malaga, Spain visiting Michael. It was perhaps a month or two before the end. You know how we say, without thinking, ‘How are you doing?’ and we expect the answer, because so many give it, ‘I’m fine’. Michael said, ‘I’m dying, Mel.’ And he was.

I can also remember the last week of his life. Our youngest brother was there and had been living with Mike in the hospice for a couple of weeks. I have rarely witnessed such tender care for anyone. There was love poured out at every hour of the day and night. And every unpleasant mop-up was done without complaint. Richard wouldn’t let me take over from him. It was his love to give, his service to provide and no one was going to rob him of it.

I remember the absence of friends when it came to visiting him there. There were one or two, but not the multitude. They said, and I can understand where they are coming from, they wanted to remember him as he was, strong and hearty, loud and rude. Everything he wasn’t at the end.

I remember another sunny day, the day of the funeral. Like vultures fighting over a body, the faith-filled friends insisted Mike was a Christian and wanted a faith-filled funeral and his not-yet-faith-filled-friends wanting heavy rock pulsating from the chapel. There was a bit of both, and marker pens to write messages on the coffin before it was cremated.

I remember the celebration at a favourite pub of Mike’s after. I had kept it together up until that point, but then I burst into tears, weeping into the glass of Jack Daniels in my hand. He was younger than me by a year. Not so clean living as me by a mile. He was on the brink of publishing a book, an ex-pats’ guide to all things Spanish.

Yes, I know cancer victims – the ones who fought and died, the ones who fought and lived and the ones who are still fighting.

No bets on who reads this to the end. No threats aimed at those who don’t.

Just Saying.