Growing up with cancer in the
family I became familiar with the concept of death. I’ve never felt the pain of
losing a loved one, but having someone so close to it makes you stop and think
of reality. It forced me to look
at life and what it really means to me. I started to question why I would be
lucky enough to be so healthy while my brother got stuck with the faulty body.
This is a life question that may never be answered, but all I can do with it
right now is take advantage of it.
By
frequenting the clinic so much, my social butterfly of a brother made a few
friends there who were around his age and receiving the same treatment. One of
them, Taylor, had been there long before Patrick and became a person he could
confide in every now and then with problems no one else could relate to. He had
Leukemia, like Patrick—just a slightly harsher strand of it. When we met Taylor
he had been cured and was in remission. Weeks later on a usual visit to the
clinic we received news that he had relapsed, then later the news of his
passing.
What
are you supposed to do with that? I have my big brother alive, strong, and
cancer free three years later, but Taylor’s family will always have a missing
piece. I haven’t done anything to “earn my keep” in this world so why did I end
up so blessed? Was Taylor’s spirit too immense of a fire for his pan[i]?
Maybe all these kid’s spirits grew to be too large and glorious of a flame that
their own body couldn’t keep up, their body could no longer do their soul
justice.
Growing
up around this idea of life having the ability to slip through someone’s
fingers has really affected my outlook on life. From a young age I was always
known for complaining, even more than most little kids (frightening I know).
After Patrick was diagnosed and I had to watch him push through the harsh
treatment, my complaining came to a slow stop. It first started because I
became voiceless.
My
family spent their days at the clinic while I spent mine in school. I
understand it now and I don’t blame them anymore, I was the only healthy one left who could still sleep at night. They were
all tired and hadn’t ever experienced this kind of drained feeling that didn’t
only come from the body, but from the emotional warfare-taking place in their
minds. In a way being so young protected me from this pain because of my
inability to comprehend the real danger that was taking place. A ten year old
became one of the strongest in the family at the beginning; so all the tension
that built up would be taken out on me because I could take it. I was the only
one who wasn’t suffering, like Pecola before society blamed everything on her.
“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed.[ii]”
That was me, in a very different way of course, but I didn’t take it and cry
about it—okay maybe a few tears later on—but now I could finally do something
to help. After I realized it wasn’t me they were yelling at it was the cancer, it was the situation, I was
all right with it if it meant it would help ease their pain for the time being.
That
is my story behind my pet peeve of complaining about the simple things and
putting up with being voiceless for a period of my life. This time of silence
has made me realize how much I want my voice heard. I’m going to make sure that
what ever I do in life, it won’t be keeping quiet. I will pursue a profession
that will allow my voice to be projected on loud speakers to a crowd of
hundreds, on the speakers of thousands TVs (just as long as it’s not Fox News[iii]),
or read on hundreds of computer screens and papers. I want to be like Fredrick
Douglass in his “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?[iv]”
speech. I want to blatantly tell people how wrong they are while calling for
social change. Maybe even call out an entire political party like the Tea Party[v]
and their outrageous beliefs. Not only do I want to be the person to bring
attention to a problem I want to be the person to help fix the problem.
Before
all these traumatic cancer events happened I always wanted to be a quaint
everyday citizen; whether it was owning my own bakery or running a small
horseback-riding barn. I wanted to stay out of people’s way because I was
terrified of life. I didn’t like the way our world worked, but I was too scared
to do anything about it. There was, at one point, a strong possibility that I
would be joining Thoreau in the woods[vi]
to isolate myself from the ugliness of society. Then I got smacked in the head
by reality.
After
seeing Taylor and many others like him pass away before getting a chance to
really live their life I realized how terribly selfish of me it would be to
hide from it. I watched my brother viscously grab onto life and never let go as
he fought to keep his incompetent body in the real world. So who was I to turn
down this blessing? I couldn’t just sit here with a healthy body wasting it as
I watch other people fight for what I just have. No! I am going to fight for the betterment of this society to make
everyone’s fight for freedom from the hospital bed worth it. Since I have the
hat and the boots[vii] in the
physical world to do something. I
have to do a great something,
that will have a positive affect on others and not just me. I have to live for
those who didn’t get a chance to.
With
how quickly we have always evolved as a society and as individuals, I cannot
plan which mode of communication and language that will be most successful in
the future for my large life plan. I do know that currently story telling in printed
form or any from of writing is no longer as influential as having it spoken to
first hand or through video. We are a generation built off of the internet, we
are much more likely to watch a twenty minute documentary about Zach Sobiech
who shared his inspirational story with us of his final days before osteosarcoma
took his life away. His video went viral and motivated viewers to donate to the
Childhood Cancer fund made in his honor. Sadly I don’t think Zach’s story would
have made this big of a turn out if it was only in written form.
Not
only is video form the best way to grab our attention, but audio as well. Part
of Zach’s popularity started because he wrote a song to say goodbye to his
family and put it on YouTube, which then went viral. We no longer rely solely
on ourselves to bring the words of the message to life. We let the music take
us on a journey of emotions that the author wanted you to feel. Some messages
can sometimes be easier to express through music than in word or written form. As
Toni Morrison puts it, language is a bridge that “arcs toward a place where
meaning may lie.”[viii] With this
generation we have added music to our commonly spoken language. Not just music,
but listening to the author’s voice, his or her emphasis on words and meanings
within the speech or story. We now include this in part of our interpretation
of the message that we take from the story. There is no need for a glossary[ix]
to be attached to the story to decode the real message. We can feel the message
within us.
By
far the most affective form of language is action. This was revealed to me
through our social change projects. Action is what I decided to do this summer.
I’m taking the initiative to start this life dream now. I decided to take my
photography and print my favorites on greeting cards to sell at my local
farmer’s market with all the profit donated to the Tommy Fund for Childhood
Cancer. I’ve named it “Mending the Broken Lives” because I have seen how
terribly childhood cancer can screw up the normal family system. This charity I
picked specifically works to make it easier on families whose children are
treated at Yale New Haven Hospital. They make it easier not only financially,
but also through donating toys to the children and the treatment areas. Patrick
received an Xbox from them at his request when he was first diagnosed because
of the time he would have to spend at home alone to avoid getting sick.
By
doing this it won’t only affect those specifically who get to benefit by the
money donated to the fund, but to my community. There is clearly something in
the air here because every year we are losing multiple people from cancer and
hearing of more and more getting diagnosed. When my brother was a freshman at
McMahon he was one of four kids who had cancer. The national average is 14.8
out of 100,000[x], which means
1 out of every 6,756; while in McMahon it was 4 out of 1,700. My community has
been harshly affected by cancer and by sharing my story and trying to make a
difference maybe I will inspire someone, or help someone realize they aren’t
alone in this.
This
is what I have taken from my seventeen years of life so far. I’ve observed our
most current ways of communicating ideas. I’ve thought possibly a little too
deeply on the thought of death. I am already developing into a young adult who
definitely is not afraid to voice my opinion, even when I know it’s not
qualified. If there is change that needs to be made, I will push for it. That
is the most substantial thing I am taking away from this class, that anyone can
cause social change. I have taken my hard times and instead of asking for
someone’s pity I have learned from these events on my own and want to spread
the wealth of what I have picked up. One day I will prove to my self that I
have earned my keep, and feel that my life is full enough to have been one for
Taylor and all the others who couldn’t make it through.
[i] Emerson,
Ralph. "The Poet." Nature (n.d.): pag. 1
2Morrison, Toni.
The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Book,
1994. Print.
[iii] Starr, Paul.
"Governing in the Age of Fox News." The Atlantic (2010): n. pag. Print.
[iv] Douglass,
Frederick. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" 5 July 1852.
Speech.
[v] Rauch, Jonathan.
"The Tea Party Paradox." National Journal (2010): n. pag. Print.
[vi] Thoreau, Henry
David. Walden. Oxford [u.a.: Oxford
Univ., 1997. Print.
[vii] Whitman,
Walt. "Songs of Myself." Leaves of Grass (n.d.): n. pag. Rpt. in The Portable Walt
Whitman. New York: Penguin, 1973. 38.
Print.
[viii] "Toni
Morrison - Nobel Lecture". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 18 Jun 2013.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html>
[ix] Carter,
Angela. "A Victorian Fable." Burning Your Boats
[x] "Childhood
Cancers." National Cancer Institute.
National Institute of Health, n.d. Web. 17 June 2013.
<http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood>.
