Cookie & Papa: Cancer Survivors

February 4th is World Cancer Day. It’s a time when cancer awareness is front and center. If there is anything that resonates with me most about this day it’s the fact that both of my grandparents, Erma Gwendolyn Spencer and Harry James Spencer are the two mightiest warriors to fight cancer that I have ever known.

In my family my grandparents Erma and Harry were known by their nicknames Cookie and Papa. As my mother’s parents they are both responsible for giving me and the rest of my family some of the greatest times of our lives. I have so many great memories of Cookie and Papa, from the times that they would come down south to North Carolina to visit us to all the times we would go visit them and the rest of our family in California. One of the biggest details that I’ll ever remember about both of them is they were my introduction to cancer.

When I was around like six or seven years old my grandma Cookie was diagnosed with cancer and at the time this news really didn’t have any kind of effect on me. I was only seven years old, what did I care about terminal illness right? But a year later I started learning that this illness known as cancer had a big impact on the remainder of one’s lifespan. I remember the first time my mother told me that her doctors only gave her about a month and a half’s worth of time left to live. I really didn’t know what to make of it because it didn’t seem real.

Interestingly enough, Cookie outlived that expect remainder of a lifespan and her health actually improved overtime. As I grew into my pre teen years and eventually became a teenager I began learning more about cancer and its effects. I was already aware of some of its effect like causing hair loss after chemotherapy. This was presented to me when Cookie and Papa came to visit us after my youngest sister was born when I was seven. Everyone laughed at my reaction to Cookie having very little hair and even akk m wearing a wig on top of it due to her chemotherapy. At the same time Cookie didn’t really seem like she was sick. She carried herself gracefully and with so much energy and a positive attitude that it just didn’t registered to me at the time.

I have no doubt that the support of Papa Harry was also a lot of help. Every time you saw them together they were smiling and full of life. That was because no matter how much strain her cancer was causing, Cookie and Papa kept seeing her through her battle. No matter what the doctors said Cookie kept going. Two years after my mom died in 2010, Cookie passed away in April of 2012 after a 12 year war with cancer. Of course I was very sad when she died but this quickly subsided and was replace by gratitude and feeling proud of grandmother for the mighty fight she put up against her condition.

Six years after Cookie passed away Papa Harry was now entrenched in his own war with cancer. It turn out he had it for years, but just like Cookie, he never complained. Papa Harry kept fighting his cancer. He didn’t let it slow him down. He kept enjoying his daily out and about activities and kept a smile on his face that was genuinely enjoying life. When he passed away in the summer of 2018 I can honestly say it was a gratifying shock. I had just spoken to him a week before he died when he was having an episode of breathing trouble. As he talked to me he could tell I was worried, but calmed down by expressing his health as just the nature of elder age and that it was nothing I should be disheartened about as opposed to accepting.

Though I was once again heartbroken when he passed away, I was also once again very proud of my other grandparent who fought his condition to the death. He didn’t feel sorry for himself and he went out in peace. When someone passes away from cancer everyone says they “loss” their battle, but how could that be considered a loss when the person fought their ailment to the death and never gave up? The truth is anyone who chooses to fight their cancer can never lose a battle against it. No one lives forever against anything. Death is inevitable for all of us, no exceptions, but what Cookie and Papa taught me was that if you choose to fight your sickness to the death as opposed to letting it make a victim out of you, then you are the winner. On this World Cancer Day let us teach the world that everyone who chooses to fight against cancer will always and forever be a survivor.

~~Dedicated to Cookie and Papa, and everyone else who is a survivor of cancer.