Dancing with Cancer

Sitting on the sidelines of cancer, it's so easy to dive into the fight, delve into the science,  figure out the options, but sometimes you just have to step back and look at it as just another path to the end we all face. Even if it's sometimes way, way too early for the rest of us. And just sit with it. Or dance with it as Ezra of Teaching Cancer to Cry says below.

I like that picture. Taking the last few months to dance with cancer and with all the people that make your life so special. To be blessed for a few last months. To be loved. To be strong. To be.

That doesn't mean I can't cry about it tho'. I do. A lot.  Or keep on searching and supporting those looking to make this a bit less of a horrible disease. I do and I will.

For those of you who would like to meet Ezra and his beautiful writing (and bikes!) take a look here:
http://www.teachingcancertocry.com/

Until then a quote from his post of 12/8/12. http://www.teachingcancertocry.com/?m=201212

For quite a while I’ve had something that I’ve wanted to say, or talk about somehow.  I have touched on it in the past but never really taken it head on.
You would all do me an amazing service if you would entertain the notion that the fight metaphor may not be the most helpful one.  Or maybe it’s not as helpful now as it was in earlier stages.  It’s difficult to change the language around something when it is so engrained.  “Fighting cancer..” “died after a long battle with cancer..”  etc.  But this implies that there are winners and losers.  That if we die we have lost.  But we ALL die.  No one makes it out alive.  That shouldn’t make us all losers.  The most pernicious part of the fight metaphor for me is the notion that if someone dies young from cancer they simply didn’t fight hard enough.  That if someone decides to forgo treatment, they have “thrown in the towel.”
I don’t see any grace in the desperate clinging to life that we call fighting in this metaphor.
Maybe instead I’m having a slow dance with a handsome and charming mad man who has made it quite clear that eventually he’ll have to USE the straight razor that he’s holding to my throat.  I believe him.  He doesn’t seem like a guy who lies.  Why he has to cut my throat isn’t clear.  In the mean time, it’s a warm embrace.  I’m holding him, he’s holding me.  He’s whispering the most beautiful and insane shit to me, all wise, all true.  I’m trying to enjoy the dance as much as I can, trying to learn as much as I can, trying to stay present despite the knife at my throat.   And now he’s starting to cry.  You dig?
Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a fighter all right.  I have been from the start.  Walking around barefoot with fists cocked.  But this isn’t a fight.