Man Of Few Words

Chapter 91

Sunday

It's a cliché to talk about "battling" against cancer, and it's almost as much of a cliché to talk about how inappropriate that language is. Yes, if you think about it, it does have implications for people like me for whom no amount of "fighting" will do any good. But I don't think those implications really get a foothold in anyone's psyche. No one in the world ever heard the news that someone "lost the fight" against cancer and thought,

"Loser."

It's just a comforting way to perceive a deeply distressing situation, right? A situation that's otherwise very difficult to get your head around. So no, I am not in any real way "fighting for my life" in here, and neither is anyone else. But I challenge you to think of a better alternative.

In fact, I'm the writer here. I challenge myself! Perhaps my new terminal illness tagline will be my one true legacy.

I am "negotiating firmly with" cancer.

I did have "I am embracing cancer", but then I Googled it and discovered that this is not a new concept. There are even some rather worrying self-help books specifically about doing that.

That and praying, by the look of it.

I am "differently surviving" cancer.

I am "carcinogenically challenged".

I am "taking my cancer down with me".

I am "amicably disagreeing with" cancer.

Was this ever funny? If it was, it wasn't funny for long.

Cancer is killing me. I have no choice in the matter. The best medical science available cannot save me. But that doesn't mean that medical science is a loser either.

My body is turning against me and destroying me from the inside. It's nobody's fault. It's just what happens to people.

Can you tell? Can you tell that I'm just saying what I think sounds right, and not what I actually feel?

What I actually feel is quite different. We'll come to that, I guess. We'll come to it eventually, before the end.

Monday

Why me?

There. I said it.

It's an appalling sentiment if you think about it, and I have been thinking about it. Nonetheless it's one I've been feeling acutely, almost all the time, since the very moment I got diagnosed.

Not "Why does this happen to anyone at all?"

Why me? Very specifically me.

There's another way of asking the exact same question:

Why not someone else?

Someone else deserves this more than I do. Why not them? Why not someone who makes gas chamber jokes in front of Jews, right to their faces, and enjoys their silent discomfort and pain? Why not someone who's murdered a doctor because that doctor performs abortions? Why not someone who listens to music on public transport without using headphones? Why not people who trample over children and the elderly on their way to snatching Black Friday bargains? Why not terrorists? Why not religious extremists? Why not oppressors of women or of the poor? Why not torturers or those who sanction torture? Why not homophobes and warmongers? Why not those who bully and censor? Why not the corrupt, the perfidious and the rotten? Why not drug pushers and crime lords?

Why me and not them?

Why me and not anyone else?

Why me and not my mother or my father or my sister or my sister's kids? Why aren't any of them dying of cancer? Why is it me? Why am I the special one? What did I do?