Cancer

Cancer has always sat comfortably in the front seat in America's sociobiological landscape; killing millions and scaring everyone as it strikes, and always arbitrarily as Fortuna's wheel. Many other diseases are genetic in nature, but the unpredictability and pervasiveness of cancer give it that nightmare quality. The diagnosis always unexpected, the prognosis so often dreary. It's a story of death, sure, but it has a nightmare prequel, almost as horrifying. Not only does a loved one perish forever, but the family is forced to watch the slow and excruciating decline in a sick sort of high definition horror film, the emotion knob turned to full blast. The family must prepare for life without the afflicted while at the same time hoping that treatment will defy the odds and eradicate the disease. And at the end of the battle, the sight of their hairless body in that casket is not any easier to behold than had they dropped dead.

The number one killer of middle-aged people at the funeral home is cancer. Recently we had two cases of women with debilitating cancer. A 34 year old with ovarian cancer, a 50 year old with spinal cancer. They both went into their doctor's office with assuredly minor medical concerns, only to find out that a tumor lived inside them, already on its fourth stage of its assault on their life. It would most likely win, and it most certainly did, leaving its typical path of physical and mental destruction in its wake. Death in old age is expected, death in childhood is tragic, but death in middle age lies in a gray area, one which often leaves families out in the cold  reality of shattered, lonely futures. A widow, left to raise a family without their partner, growing old with only the memories of their lost love. Maybe not alone forever, but alone through circumstances not of their choosing, and that lack of choice creates a scar that is everlasting. Children left without a mother or a father, siblings left without their children's aunt or uncle, parents forced to undergo the trauma of attending their own child's funeral. And the long road of cancer only makes it hurt worse. The family of the deceased at both funerals had baggy eyes, pale skin and were visibly weary from the battle, barely digesting the harsh reality in which a faceless enemy stole their loved one and rocked their futures.