For R.

I know a man, an old friend, who is dying of cancer.  He's about to leave us.  He's not much older than me.  He has a young family.  His friends are praying, for what they don't say.  They're telling him to hang in there, their approach aggressive, we'll beat this.. but his physical frame is a shadow of itself, a skeleton.  He has lost his colour and is white.. as white as the snow he so dearly loves.  Emaciated, laying upon the couch wearing a toque, covered in blankets and posing for pictures with visiting friends, I try hard to see the man I used to work side by side with.  I have seen this picture before, in my mind's eye I can still see it.. this earliest of memories.

I was close to 5 years old, the same age as my oldest boy.  I sat upon the legs of an older woman who was also covered in a blanket.  She wore some kind of head covering, a handkerchief perhaps, and looked kindly at me.  Directly in front of her was a metal bucket, once used to hold flour but now converted to hold vitamin C crystals.  She had been told that vitamin C would fight the cancer in her body and so sat there all day, scooping one half of a translucent capsule into the powder, screwing the other half on, then swallowing it, without any water (or at least I can't recall her taking a drink).  This is the earliest, and only memory of my grandmother.  She had bone cancer and would not live to see the end of the year.  She smiled at me.  I smiled at her.  I couldn't understand what was happening.  I just knew that she was my grandma.

So you see, I've seen a person ravaged by cancer near the very end.  No matter how hard they fight, or how much others would like them to fight, the cancer takes them in the end.  When the disease is this advanced, calls to "Fuck Cancer!" are barbarous.  My friend knows the fight is over.  I can see it in his eyes.  Must he continue to play the game for you? 

This does not mean dying should be left to the funeral mourners.  After all, dear R., how pleasant it is to look out your window and see the freshly fallen snow.  Can you picture yourself flying over it like the wind!  Your perfectly tuned machine carrying your body and spirit into the sun?  Into the sun dear R.?