Maybe Dying, Maybe Not

 

“I am going to die.” We took a poll in my cancer support group, and that’s what each of us thought when our doctors said we had cancer. 

As it is for my friends, the thought of dying is never far from my mind. It is a possibility, and my oncologist hasn’t said that I’m not, so I exist in a netherworld where I hold my breath and wonder when it will happen and how. He actually thinks I’m doing quite well. He said so, after I asked, because the dread of dying was weighing heavily on me that day. 

The Poetry of Cancer

 

Ilyse Kusnetz, Angel Bones, 2019, and Julie Hungiville LeMay, The Echo of Ice Letting Go, 2017

When we are dying from cancer and facing the end of our life, our senses sharpen and words distill into images and metaphors of poetry.

Not all of us are poets, of course, and not all of us would take time away from living our last months to look for the words to express what we are feeling and thinking. Rather than write, we may want to complete items from our bucket list that we’ve kept putting off, or focus on sharing everything we’ve learned about life with our children. Maybe we want to stop trying to achieve goals and simply enjoy each day free of outside expectations.