Expressions

As Powerless as Cancer
Submitted by Adam Bergman

Cancer is powerless.  As strong and painful as it is on
one end, it is equally weak and flimsy at the other.
As a child, cancer is your worst nightmare.
You imagine the day that one of your parents gets it,
and that day is the end of the world.
So like a child, when I found out that my mother had been
diagnosed with leukemia, I panicked like a child.
I imagined my life with only my father and my sister, and everything
fell apart in my imaginary world. At the time though, I had no idea
how weak cancer really was. I had no idea that cancer could actually make a family better.
And I had no idea how strong my mother was. I watched cancer come into my
house and try to break apart my family. I watched it creep inside my father and sister,
I felt it inside me, and I watched it try to kill my mother.
But I also saw four human beings triumph over it in a way that can’t be described by words.
I saw a woman defy all the odds. I saw a woman with an expiration date muster
more power than any cancer could ever bestow upon her.
I watched a family come together to do the unthinkable. We beat cancer.
So we proved that cancer is powerless. We have a magnet on our refrigerator
that helps put into words what I saw in my house when cancer tried to come in.
To quote it, “What cancer cannot do:
It cannot cripple love; it cannot shatter hope;
it cannot corrode faith; it cannot destroy peace;
it cannot kill friendship; it cannot suppress memories;
it cannot silence courage; it cannot invade the soul;
it cannot steal eternal life; it cannot conquer the spirit.”