Scars

I have a new friend from all this old cancer...we didn't even know each other. But, the day I was diagnosed she and her husband Wai dropped everything and arrived at my door to support me in any and every way. They sat at my kitchen counter and told me to be afraid, but to move through the fear. You see, Erin is a two time Breast Cancer Survivor. She understands the disease all too well. But, no amount of preparedness can ward away the cancer demon when it comes knocking on your door. Emma, her four year old daughter was diagnosed yesterday with a Liver Sarcoma. Now, you don't need to be a parent to know that as one you would do everything possible to block the pain from your child...to have it for them. To fight and conquer. As a parent it seems like your fight is double than it would ever be for yourself.

I went to visit the hospital today. Emma was having a scan, and she wasn't in the room, but the emotional pain was so evident on Erin and Wai's face that the pain became a physical entity. A monster that could swallow you whole if you weren't watching.

We began to talk about Emma's recent surgery. Her scar that she'd have almost entirely across her belly. And, of course, Erin said to me "I don't care how many scars she has, just so that she comes back to me" Of course we agree.

And as I was reading today a passage jumped out at me and I had to write it...in a way that a writer catalogues inspiration that might vanish into thin air. It goes like this "On the girl's legs were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived." -Chris Cleave, Little Bee