Cancer & My Papap

Cancer is a writhing, slippery demon. Snaking its way through the body wreaking havoc from start to finish. It begins as a microscopic cell then it spreads across a whole organ, 0nly to spread even further bringing anguish to each cell that it so much as grazes. And it will keep going because cancer never dies, the pain never ends, it will steal every bit of joy it can as you claw at your own body wondering why and how such pain could exist.

This is how I conceptualize my grandfather's cancer, or as I knew him, Papap. This is the only way I know how to conceptualize an illness so terrible and so powerful it took away the most joyful man I ever knew so quickly. In a matter of weeks, he went from the affable, loveable, middle school science teacher, to a breath of a man hanging on for dear life in a hospital bed. Family and friends gathered around him and placed a prayer blanket on him, with small yellow threads to be tied together with a unique wish, prayer, dream, or hope they had. You might see this as a beautiful and tragic moment, and it was, but many times all I can feel is anger.

Anger that this disease still exists, anger at what it took from my family, how it took my grandfather away so painfully until he was a shell of a man, how we missed it for so long that it was too late when we found out about his illness, anger that I couldn't do anything to stop it, and righteous rage about how our bodies could betray us in such a way.

I remember sitting in the hospital as a confused little girl clutching her stuffed animal wondering if her wonderful Papap could hear her and thinking he couldn't.

That brief stay at the hospital severed my life in two. There was life before my grandfather died, uncomplicated and filled with joy, and there was life after he died, complicated, confusing, and filled with a deep sense of loss.

Even now, almost a decade later I can still feel that emptiness. I don't have a lot of happy memories from my childhood, I was plagued with mental illness and stress has wiped away most of my memories from when I was truly young. I have glimpses of what life was like before my grandfather's passing. Images of him standing before his middle school students and playing guitar for a talent show, going to his study and seeing the photos and records he collected of our distant relatives, how he found photos of our family entering this country through the Ellis island ports, I remember how he joked around every chance he could, I remember chocolate popsicles and Christmas villages, and I remember the sound of his laugh. His jovial nature is something I can only aspire to now.

I get flashes here and there of what life was like immediately after. I remember the open-casket funeral that broke my heart into pieces, eating small wraps at a distant family member's house right after, and thinking others weren't sad enough. I get flashes of the grade school years directly following, playing on the playground, teachers showing me small acts of kindness, and faces of friends I can no longer name.

Later on down the line, I remember more clearly, dark periods of loneliness, depression, and fear brought on by my OCD. I remember finding a new family in my high school band, an excursion to the Blue Ridge Mountains which healed my soul just a little bit, joining a local Buddhist group as I clung to the fragments of healing I could find, and I remember struggling so much as I tried to tie the threads of my life together with nothing more than wishes no one was hearing.

It's all a collection of aged photographs shown by doting parents, real memories I've clung to over the years, and imagined reality that fills the gaps present in each of our personal histories. Each one representing an uneven brushstroke on the canvas of life.

Perhaps this moment is why I read and write so much fiction now. Because almost all of my memories are hazy and unreal, but the one that feels the most potent and real is the one of a monster slowly consuming the hero of my story to his death. All I can do in the aftermath is try and wield the broken sword he left behind, and follow in his footsteps, not with his jokes but with my own stories.

Whenever I work with students in my classrooms, I think of him, he would be so proud of me. And though that demon we call cancer severed my life in two and ended his, my life is still my own, and I forge who I will become.

Please consider donating to the following charities:

Prevent Cancer Foundation - devoted to finding ways to prevent cancer so no one has to go through the tragedy and hardship of surviving, or passing away from cancer.

Colorectal Cancer Alliance - my grandfather passed away from colon cancer, I appreciate anyone fighting to stop this menace.

As well as any other cancer prevention or treatment charities you know of and are meaningful to you. Together, we can overcome this monster.