Hope Eroded

     I am chatting with my online ovarian cancer sisters tonight. I do this most nights. We check up on each other, follow progress, cheer success, offer advice, share recipes, ask questions, suffer setbacks, laugh darkly at cancer humor. We have a weirdly intimate connection for a group of women who have mostly never met face to face. But tonight feels different. Tonight is heavy with grief. We have lost 2 sisters. Our dear C, whose kind heart reached out to help others even when she was suffering herself, and feisty B, whose love of life taught us all to never stop. News of more deaths, of other sisters, trickles in tonight. Our conversation turns unconsciously to the details of their lives, how old? what stage? when diagnosed? We are comparing her story to our own. We compare both stories to the statistics. We admonish ourselves for doing this, but we cannot stop ourselves from doing it.

     We all know that statistics are just numbers, but when you hear that a friend died and she was 49, stage 3, diagnosed 3 years ago.....and those are your numbers too....man, that gets real. The room gets quiet. Someone says that statistics mean nothing. Someone offers a story that contradicts the numbers, a story from the other side of the numbers, the odds defying story. Someone says "Amen!"  Silence. Someone is crying. Someone else just says "fuck". We hug. We go our separate ways for a moment or twenty or a hundred.

    The heart of the silence is this, a little part of our hope has died. Our hopes are dampened  by what we see happening around us. I hope I don't get cancer. Oh? OK, I hope it's not too bad. Oh? OK, I hope I don't have any complications. Oh? OK, I hope it doesn't come back. Oh? OK, I hope it doesn't come back too fast. Oh? OK, I hope....... gosh, I am afraid to hope.

     So why do I choose to hang around a group of women with ovarian cancer? Obviously they are bringing me down, what with all that dying. Maybe I should not be friends with other cancer patients. I will argue that those who are closest to dying are those who are closest to living. We share recipes because we love to eat delicious food. We laugh at ourselves because it's funny, really, even the cancer stuff, really. We ask after each other because  we understand not only the heartbreak of a setback, but also the joy of beating back the beast. We encourage each other whenever we can, with empathy (not the head-tilt-of-pity). That's what cancer people do for each other.

     The ovarian sisters are back, some of us anyway.  We talk about healing. We talk about knitting. We act normal with each other. Someone says "Know what I hope for? I hope to live a good life."  Someone says, "Amen."