That was my text reaction to my kids on learning that their mother had been diagnosed with another breast cancer last week. Her first was nineteen years ago. The docs don't know if this is a recurrence or a new cancer altogether.
"Why mom?" No family history, no lifestyle tell-tales. "Why not me?" Cancer is my family's curse as the gout was the Deadlocks in Bleak House. My grandfather, my father, my mother, my older brother, my youngest brother, me, all had cancer. It killed the first three, it will kill the others of us. I smoked cigarettes, I drank, I never ate well; except for a ten-year span I didn't exercise, I don't go to doctors unless I have symptoms. I had prostate cancer three years before my second ex-wife had her first breast cancer. For all I fucking know cancer is eating at me as I type, probably is, but I have no symptoms. My ex went every year for a mammogram. Found this cancer just this year. Cancer to me is proof that the universe is not just, that there is no benevolent God looking over us. Cancer is random, it strikes the good and those just asking for it equally. I hate it when it strikes the good. Sensing the need, I sent this text to my ex and the family yesterday:
Marie has brought more happiness to people than anyone I know. I have never met anyone who is as universally beloved. She makes each of us want to be a better person.
Both light and hearth, when she is not her best physically, we are not our best psychically. The world is a dimmer, colder place.
For once I intuited correctly. It was well-received, deeply appreciated. It did not make the cancer go away.
