Recently, I was asked by someone at the Ride To Conquer Cancer to write a piece on why I’m riding this year. This is that piece. It wasn’t used where we had hoped…but I wanted to share it with you guys. The ride is a month away! I may not be ready… but I’m going to kick it in the ass.
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When I was five years old, I didn’t know about cancer. I’m not sure I even realized that some people didn’t live to be a kabillion years old. I was interested in barbies and bikes. Looking back, it was sort of glorious.
My son Will, is five going on fifty. He lives under much different circumstances. He knows that some people get cancer. He understands that some people live, some people die and some people can lose a limb.
Thank you Terry Fox.
I was 11 years old when Terry ran his Marathon of Hope and it was the first I had heard of cancer. Lose a leg? Die? But he was so young! In the year that Terry captured the hearts and minds of Canada and the world, he totally had mine. But then I moved on. While it touched me, it didn’t have a personal connection so I think my pre-teen brain moved back on to boys and training bras, as it should have.
Twenty-years later, my mother was diagnosed with a stage four brain tumour. It doesn’t get more personal than that. That same year she died from leukemia.
Suddenly it seemed everyone had cancer or was being touched by it. My rose-coloured glasses were pulled from my face and I understood how prevalent this disease is and how many people’s lives are taken or forever altered by battling it or by loving a person in the trenches.
The AMAZING Jo and her beautiful daughter. (Mother’s Day 2014)
Last year in school, Will learned about Terry Fox. Like me, I think he was fascinated by Terry’s story but it was still abstract. Distant. I had told him all about my mother, the grandmother that he would never meet. Again, not something that personally touched him. Then a few months after the Terry Fox run, Will’s daycare teacher JoJo was diagnosed with cancer. Synovial sarcoma, a very rare and painful cancer. His rose coloured glasses were off.
His questions, like always, were many.
“If Terry had cancer in his leg and they took it, do they take your head if you have brain cancer?”
“Will JoJo still be at the daycare?”
“Why do some people get cancer and some people don’t?”
“Will you get cancer and die Mom?”
There are two different paths to take here. I chose honesty. I told him that Jo’s cancer was making her very sick but that she had amazing doctors, at the same hospital, Princess Margaret, that my mother had and that hopefully, in time, she would be just fine. But I also explained that I couldn’t promise him she would be.
I also said that I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t get cancer. I told him that nobody knows.
As I was explaining it, it made me so angry. We shouldn’t have to be talking about this. He shouldn’t know a teacher, a young teacher, getting cancer. He shouldn’t have to think that someone he loves could get sick and die. We should be talking about Scooby Doo and not about hospitals.
This June I’m riding in my first Ride to Conquer Cancer for Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. I hope I don’t have to ride in very many. It’s like what my brother said to my mom’s palliative care doctor, “don’t take this the wrong way but I hope we never have to see you again.” I want cancer to be gone in my lifetime.
When my son has a five year-old, I want him to tell them about cancer and for it to be so abstract that their rose-coloured glasses can stay fully in place for a while. That’s what childhood should be.
If you’d like to donate to my ride to Conquer Cancer – you can access my page here. Thanks!
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