Never buried, those deep fearful memories
of hoary vintage and new. Easy enough to
dredge to the surface of your thoughts
unbidden but vibrant with grief and
regret though the years pass and those
who left so long ago remain as they were
when they appear in dreams but not to
the waking mind which recalls them wan
and shrunken halfway to death because
no power in medicine nor longing nor
faith could apprehend the inexorable
process of cancer. You know what it is --
so deserving of the dread no other mortal
enemy is capable of calling up like a dagger
of ice plunged deep within your heart and
you palpitate with silent terror at the very
word. It is a curse, a blasphemy against the
sacredness of life, a wrench turning the lever
of existence to the off position. The agony of
despair and fear overwhelming the mind when
a parent, a sibling, a friend, a neighbour, an
acquaintance reveals the newly-acquired burden
they have somehow inherited and you instinctively
search for consoling words and they will not
come for what can you say of this savage
disease that destroys life? Is there comfort in
formulaic words of compassion when you
know of your own experience that sounds
voiced in the chasm of forlorn pain are not
deciphered as consolation but acknowledgement
of the inevitable, and this they already know.
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