Cancer

CANCER I was ten when you invaded our family, when my sixty year old grandfather died with lung cancer and at that time I never really understood it; but knew it was a deadly disease for two women closed to our family died earlier with breast cancer and saw both of them suffering and heard them screaming in pain. You came back when I was twenty taking my grandmother with stomach cancer. At least that was one of the causes of her death, although not the primary cause. You came again and again taking my aunt at forty seven and my youngest aunt at forty eight with breast cancer that made me live in anxiety and scared of you. Scared because this disease was in our maternal blood line, although the doctor assured me, it was not a direct blood line for it was not my biological mother. I had a cyst on my right breast when I was forty four and the doctor asked to come back to exasperate it and I told him to do it right then with no reservation. The result came negative; but your shadow never left me, haunting me. I was thinking my youngest aunt was only five years older than me and we grew up together living in the same household, eating the same food, doing the same things until we separated to live our lives when I was twenty or so. For five years I lived in your shadow wondering, worrying the cyst would come back and what would happen to me, to my children and the angst never left me. I was elated when I turned forty nine for I passed my aunts’ ages of forty seven and forty eight and celebrated for my fear went away; you were out of my mind. That was twenty years ago and three weeks ago; you took my best friend’s life. You are an abnormal cell that invades, grows and divides without control to destroy the nerves, tissues, organs, blood vessels impairing their functions. You are a complex disease that can be benign or can be malignant that kills. Like an ivy, a vigorous and aggressive plant that grows out of control choking other plants, damaging walls and structures and toxic to humans and pets. Just like different types of cancer in our society, such as greed, corruption, brutality, materialism, racism, harassment causing havoc, unrest, chaos, killings. 6/11/21 Cancer Ivy Poetry Chantelle Anne Cooke