Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Cancer Dance

5/11/10 Nancy Gibbs essay for this week’s TIME magazine offered food for thought.
“Cancer hands you red-hot shoes and makes you dance with death everyday for the rest of your life. So, the question is, Who gets to lead? And what can the rest of us learn from watching?”
For sometime now, this blogger has been asking others to consider, along with her, these very same questions. These questions aren’t cancer specific. It’s just that cancer or other catastrophic diseases can bring such questions to the forefront of our thinking.

Certainly in those first weeks after my diagnosis, I worked on getting my affairs in order with lawyers and living wills, info in files and letters to kids. But more than that, I wanted assurance. Assurance that, in the event of my death, my friends would “take on my absence” from my family by filling in the gaps of my life for them. My kids know me (sometimes better than I know myself) but I wanted my “grands” to know personal things about their “Shug.”
My dear friend, Pam, has taken hold of this idea. She has a “cupcake” party each summer for her friends and their grandchildren. We are all introduced by our granny names. It’s a casual way of initiating our “grands” to each other and to us, the grandmas. It’s an unspoken assurance that we’ll be there to carry on those values, that we all hold dear, to each other’s grands if one of us passes away. A passing on of the traditions and the values, which we have shared, through the years.

In my "dance", I have asked the Lord to lead and have tried to share with others what I’m learning. What I am learning is the importance of relationships---a vertical relationship with the Lord that extends horizontally to my family and friends. A community of faith. A fellowship of friends who are committed to going the distance with each other even when one is wearing “red-hot cancer shoes.”