I Watched Cancer Make Them Warriors

I remember the first day my mother went out in public after cancer took her hair. We walked up the church aisle on Sunday morning and she led us calmly to our seats. She did not hide in the back pew. She marched between the rows of parishioners with an air of beautiful courage. And heads turned. Not to fill their gossip tanks, not to fuel cruel fires, but to witness the resilience, the fortitude in their midst.

I've walked next to cancer; I’ve stood ringside as a number of people that I love took the corner opposite it. Cancer is a vicious, barbaric opponent; it does not hit lightly, and it does not stop to breathe. But there is a strength within the human spirit that perseveres in the face of it. Each time someone that I love straps on their gloves to battle with cancer - it does not leave the ring unscathed. Because those who face off with cancer come to fight.

No matter how weak, how young or old, how hopeless, how afraid...they swing back, and they swing hard. I’ve seen them prevail as champions, and I’ve seen them fall in the final rounds, but never, in all of my time spent ringside, have I seen a battle with cancer that was not one hell of a fight. And in that alone, they’ve won.

Cancer fights dirty. It claws and scratches and bites, but they keep throwing punches until there are no punches left to throw. There is a power that comes from the threat to life that glows from within and creates a strength from a place we didn’t know was there. And while this opponent is a monster, is a brutish fiend that pillages from the body - the bravery of the human spirit never fails to rise and swing back.

I watched cancer take things from beautiful people that they never deserved to lose. I watched cancer leave bruises and scars. I watched cancer break against the fierce power that exists within the people that I love. I watched cancer make them warriors. I watched heroes rise from the broken pieces, and each time, despite the unearned things it steals, cancer loses. Because I watched cancer make them warriors. And that: the strength, is what I’ll remember in the face of it. Because the strength is what wins out in the end. Because they wear their scars like purple hearts, and as long as the spirit prevails, cancer cannot take what it does not deserve: love, beauty, grace. In the face of battle, we must remember that all of these things remain.