This is Not "A Field Guide to North American Birds"

There are a few things you should know about Cancer. People whisper the word in grocery store corridors and block parties as if it’s a cuss word, a dirty word, as if just mentioning it is contagious. I could tell you that I hadn’t heard it before, that when I did, it hit me like a ton of bricks, that my thoughts and emotions whirled out of control, spinning like the arrival and departure times on the information board at Heathrow. But I would be lying. Maybe that would pique your interest, gratify some voyeuristic pleasure, confirm everyone’s secret hope that when something big happens to them the world stops turning. It doesn’t.

Cancer first slunk into my awareness as I sat in a church pew, at 7, playing with the hem of my dress and wondering why, if my friend’s mom, with her water balloon tying knowledge, and barely noticeable blond wig was gone, why my friend sat through the entire ceremony and laughed. Cancer, that’s what it does to you, it doesn’t make you put on a put on a Joni Mitchell CD and stay in bed, not moving, with the covers over your head in mid March. It doesn’t make you have that third gin and tonic or sit on the floor of the shower to scream while your clothes are soaked through. No, Cancer makes you want to stand at the edge of the world, and look into the abyss and laugh, because there is nothing, nothing, that you can control, or ignore, or understand, or change. So you laugh.

You should know that Cancer is like finding a library book, buried under some papers on your desk, unpaid bills, grocery lists, an old book report, and knowing that it is so overdue that nothing can be done, but sit and wait for a bill with a charge so high you could never have imagined or foreseen. And all you can do is laugh, laugh at a world where you have to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for A Field Guide to North American Birds, or some other book you never even had the time to read. Cancer is listening to Wynton Marsalis or Duke Ellington while your Father’s face turns the color of sunflowers from jaundice. Cancer is reading a childhood book amid tubes and medical implements that drip and hum. Cancer is about talking about movies with ever increasing levels of evisceration. Cancer is about sitting there, and calmly conducting the final interview. This is what you should know about Cancer: Have your interview questions prepared in advance.