Writing prompt - "Mind"

What's been on your mind? What have you carried and gnawed over? Go. Ten minutes.

My dad's cancer has been on my mind a lot lately. I find myself mulling over the eventual possibilities of its reality a lot. Wondering. Wishing. Making plans. Focusing on the good. Avoiding too much speculation. This is actually something of a breakthrough for me; in the five years since he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I've spent a lot of time avoiding this mental subject. Last week when I suddenly found the words I needed to articulate what this experience has been like, I also found a measure of freedom.

I think that's why I write. Words bubble up inside of me and until I get them out in some way - on paper, on the blog, out loud - I can feel them hovering and buzzing. Not being able to vocalize something is terrifying for me. The nightmares I still remember from my childhood are the ones where I was scared but couldn't scream. An inability to communicate everything inside me...well, I would lose myself pretty quickly.

The more I think about this, the more I realize how true it is. Last summer I had something weighing on me until it became almost an obsession. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I finally broke and told my best friend everything, and almost instantly, I felt monumentally better. Strange as it sounds, articulating what cancer means to me has brought me relief, even though I am finally facing the pain of it. I have stopped thinking about it all the time. I think I was afraid of what would come out when I finally talked about it, and afraid I wouldn't be able to say the truth. I'm not afraid anymore. Well, less afraid.

What cancer means

A few days ago, I found out that a friend's sister has cancer. She was diagnosed one day, in surgery the next, only to find out the tumor was inoperable. It's the worst kind of news. I don't know what the prognosis is; I don't know what the biopsy revealed; I don't know how much time there is. I do know that anything short of a literal miracle won't be enough. It's not that I don't fervently believe in miracles, I just know what it's like to not get one.

My mom asked me once what I felt I had learned since my dad's diagnosis. Or maybe she asked how I felt like I had changed. Either way, I don't remember what I said to her, only what I wanted to say: I've learned how to be afraid.

What will my dad miss - birthdays, babies, weddings, graduations? What will we miss because he's not here? How can we do anything without him? What won't ever be the same? How could anything be? And sooner than that, what will my dad have to endure? Will he suffer? Will we? Will I?

I don't know what it's like to be told that you have cancer, but I know what cancer means. It means fear and uncertainty and all your plans fracturing. It means hospitals and doctors, unending treatments and surgery. It means bad news and facing the worst while hoping for the best. It means lots of prayers. It means dying. Just the word "cancer" makes you want to hold on tighter to everything you have, but what becomes very clear very quickly is that you no longer have any control. Things are going to happen whether you want them to or not, and you have to search for the choices you can still make.

I'm no longer angry that my dad has cancer; I've made my peace with what seemed to me for a long time to be a lack of miracles. Well, mostly. It's not fair; it never was and it never will be. But I've found a few things I can control and I cling to those. For most of the past five years since my dad was diagnosed, I thought that cancer meant grieving. Not just grief, but active, ongoing grieving, and I couldn't handle that. I chose to put it away and never look at it for too long or too hard. I thought I had come to terms with it, but really I had just found a balance between denial and acceptance - one foot in each camp.

What I understand now is that cancer is a process. The process of coming to terms, of learning to cope, of overcoming anger and fear, of loving more deeply, of finding support, of growing closer to God. For most cancer patients, it's the process of dying, but I've come to believe it's also the process of living and of making life meaningful.

"Love is stronger than cancer." That's what our shirts said. We made them and wore them proudly, but I wrestled with that phrase because no matter how much I love my dad, cancer will eventually take him away from me. I understand now that cancer can't ever take away how much I love him or how much he loves me. That doesn't change. Love, family strength, memories - cancer can't touch those. In fact, during the first few months after the diagnosis, I remember feeling like our little family was closer and stronger than ever.

Cancer is hard. The realities of cancer have always been hard. There is faith and hope and love and life, but there is also disappointment and pain and fear and death. Mostly, there is just hard. It's the kind of hard that hammers at you, especially when you least expect it to. It weighs you down with wondering; it wears on you; it wearies you. Truthfully, it is awful every single day.

In the meantime, there is life that has to be lived and choices still to be made. Finding strength to make those choices - deliberately, consciously - can be the hardest part of all, but it's also what can save us. We can choose to spend our time meaningfully, to cherish the people we have, to love unreservedly. We can choose to make room for pain and disappointment instead of trying to shut it out, and we can choose faith in spite of our fears. We can choose not to dwell on the end or let the cancer take control. These are choices that have to be made and re-made every day; sometimes circumstances force you back to square one with all the grief and pain of a new diagnosis, but the choices are still ours to make. If my mom asked me that same question today, what have you learned?, I would still say that I've learned how to be afraid, but I've also learned how to choose faith and love over fear and death.

That is what cancer means.

Four years of cancer

I haven't written much about my dad's cancer, partially because I don't feel like garnering pity, but partially because it's hard to talk about. Hard to talk about it in a deep, meaningful, truthful way. I can spout answers to how he's doing, how we're dealing, in a very general way, but the truth? The deep, from my soul, truth?

I don't know if I can express that yet.

It's been four years, you would think I would have come to terms with cancer by now. And in most ways, I have. It's a part of our lives and it's the giant uncertainty that we live with.

But the future? What my dad having cancer really means?

I remember when I found out. I was walking across BYU campus through late afternoon sunlight and chilly winter air. My phone rang; it was my dad. He told me right away: "I have some bad news." I don't know what I said but I was in shock. A friend offered me a ride home; I accepted and we were halfway to the apartments before I remembered that I had driven that morning and my car was still on campus.

I spent the next week crying and trying not to cry and mostly, focusing really hard on not thinking about it. I felt like something had broken. Rachel called me one day while I was having lunch in the middle of the Wilkinson Center. I fought back tears and panic as I tried to reassure her that I was scared, too. I wanted to be home and at the same time, I didn't. I didn't want to look that word, "cancer", in the face. I was busy with work and school and I let that carry me.

Four years later, and the truth is, even though I have stopped trying to hide from cancer, I haven't really stopped trying to hide. I am still scared.