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Amy Oscar
“Do you want to see it?” Mom asks. When I nod, she
unhooks her bra and shows me the incision where her
doctor performed a lumpectomy, removing a tumor
the size of a sesame seed.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, referring to the breast—not the
two-inch scar curving around the bottom, though
there’s artistry in that, too.
A few minutes later, when she’s dressed and we’re
sitting on the sofa—Mom with the little thermos of
coffee she always brings along, me with my English
Breakfast tea—she tells me, “They found more.”
office to say, “I have breast cancer,” would now be swept away, into the dusty pile where my family stores its
memories. Instead, I’m holding onto her, blinking back tears as a riptide of terror and tenderness crashes through
the room. “What now?” I ask.
“I’m thinking that over,” she says, explaining her options—radiation, chemotherapy, mastectomy.As she leaves,
with promises to keep me informed, my own breast starts to ache. I catch myself rubbing it from time to time all
day: a bruise of love I use to feel connected to her.
That moment, and the mastectomy and recovery that followed, happened more than two years ago. Six months
later we celebrated her 72nd birthday at my son’s Bar Mitzvah. Three days after that… 9/11/2001.
I don’t exactly divide my life into before Mom’s cancer and after, but I could. So much has changed.
Before Mom’s cancer, I treated the whole dreaded business with a “don’t-mess-with-me, I-wont-mess-with-you”
approach.“Cancer doesn’t scare me,” I’d swagger. “I eat organic food, do yoga, and anyway, cancer’s all about state
of mind. I’m not a cancer kind of person.” When I came across a story about cancer in a magazine, I’d turn the
page. If it came up in conversation, I’d change the subject. Baseline mammogram? Not for me! I was immune! But
run from something long enough...
In my day job, I worked as a features editor for a women’s magazine and it was my job to write the stories they
assigned me. That year, for the first time, I was assigned cancer stories.I interviewed the mother of a 12-year-old
boy who’d battled leukemia and won. I spoke with a woman who’d survived a brain tumor, and a heroic firefighter
with stage four sarcoma in the muscles of his shoulder.
As we talked, I started to absorb the peculiar language of cancer—needle biopsy, metastasis, lumpectomy,
melanoma—and entered, through their stories, into the world of hospital corridors, hope and confusion that is
cancer today.
Some of what they shared made me cringe—radiation burns, infected chemo ports, nausea.
Some of it pierced my heart—the teenage son who shaved his head when his mom lost her hair; the coworkers who
donned baseball caps and declared it “Hat Day” when their chemo-bald colleague returned to work; the husband
who switched his hours to the graveyard shift so he could sit beside his wife for every treatment, telling her jokes,
singing to her, holding her hand.
I listened to their stories, awestruck, tearful. And I started to notice something. Each story contained a turning
point, a moment when, facing terror and mortality, something changed.
“I felt free,” one woman told me. “And clearer than I’d ever been. Suddenly, I knew who I was, deep down. I knew
what really mattered to me. And I knew that if I beat the cancer, things were going to change.”
They gave up meat, took up jogging, left toxic relationships and risked forgiving old hurts. They fell in love and told
the truth about needing help. They quit dead-end jobs. They started businesses and quit soul-deadening jobs.
None of them claimed that the changes in lifestyle or attitude had healed the cancer. All of them said that having
cancer—while terrifying—had been only part of the challenge.
Through them, I came to understand that cancer might very well be a signal of a deeper “dis-ease” and that, with
courage, faith and, often, forgiveness, it could become the catalyst for a completely new way of living one’s life.
Then, I got that call from Mom and, for a while, I was too busy juggling job, family and being there for her to notice
that because of the stories that had been shared with me, because I’d witnessed a bit of the human side of cancer, I
was able to walk those hospital corridors myself, understand what my mother’s doctors were telling us, or just sit by
the side of her bed, holding her hand, without fear.
Their stories helped me—and my family—through the most difficult situation we’d ever faced together. Then they
helped us find the unexpected gifts of Mom’s cancer.
Yes, there were gifts. For just like the people I’d interviewed, cancer had posed my sisters, parents and me with a
challenge.We’d been drifting apart. For years, we’d had trouble doing even the simplest things—like picking up the
phone—for each other. Part of it was shyness, not wanting to intrude on each other’s busy lives. All of it, I’m
certain, was fear of what being closer could do to us—take our precious time, suck away our autonomy, make us
(God forbid) obligated in some way. Mom’s cancer forced us to get over ourselves and do what was needed—stay in
touch, show up, make clear decisions—freely and with love. It forced us to heal our family.
No one really knows what causes cancer—a gene, dumb luck, our toxic world? What we do know is this: In the
heart of this darkness, there is light, trapped and pulsing, calling out to those affected by it to awaken, to take firm
hold of their lives and make choices—choices toward health, toward wholeness, toward love.
Mom’s cancer asked me: How can you be a more loving daughter, a more present wife and mother, a truer friend?
Mom’s cancer asked me: What matters to you now?
When the answers came, from a deep, long-ago-buried place, my heart ached with recognition. Something deep
inside of me stirred that day and has been growing ever since.
Love each moment you are given, it whispers. Whether you are doing the laundry, driving to work or climbing into
bed. Argue less—appreciate more.
That’s what Mom’s cancer taught me—that life is rich and fragile and precious and that the most important thing I
can do with my time is to use it to find the gift in each day.