What can make a comic cry?
I made a comedian cry last week before our Zebra Comedy Night at the Elks Lodge in New Bedford. Jane’s NET cancer story–even in small doses–does that to people. Twenty-eight months after her death it still does it to me.
I don’t walk for Jane–I walk with her.
After the show, he asked me what keeps me going in this fight. No one has ever asked me that question before–though it is a good question. Part of the answer has to do with wanting revenge for Jane’s death and all the years together we lost as a result. But there is more to it than that.
NET cancer can
I watched Jane die. She fought heroically from the day she was told she most likely had cancer to the day they told us there was nothing more they could do for her. I watched the debilitating effects of the NET cancer endgame claim her mobility, her patience, her pride, her self-control–everything that made Jane, Jane.
I walk, I write, I plead, I beg.
I helped the nurses change her bedding every time she lost control of her bowels, helped them bathe her, and stood vigil day after day and night after night. I lost 20 pounds and countless hours of sleep in the 28 days she was in the hospital losing her life.
The unheard terror of NET cancer
We tried everything there was to try but it was not enough to stop the light in her eyes from going out. And when she died, it was in my arms. There is no more hopeless feeling in the world than to hold the still body of the one you love, knowing it will never move again–that it cannot return your embrace.
NET cancer is just one more cancer in the pantheon.
Four people died last week in the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath. For a week it crowded nearly everything else off the pages of the newspapers and the airwaves. Even the explosion in West, Texas that killed 16 and leveled a town had difficulty finding room in America’s consciousness.
Two-hundred-thirty-one families lost a loved one to NET cancer last week. By the end of this week another 231 families will do the same.
NET cancer not front page news
This will not be front page news. The nation will not mobilize battalions of police and National Guardsmen to hunt down this mass murderer that will claim 12,000 lives this year alone. NET cancer is not a terrorist. It is not even perceived as a major public health issue. It is just one more cancer in the pantheon.
Two-hundred-thirty-one families lost a loved one to NET cancer last week.
But for those 33 people NET cancer kills every day, for their families and loved ones, the burden is just as heavy–and just as senseless.
The empty chair
I don’t know what it feels like to die of NET cancer–I can only imagine what Jane went through within that shrinking body. But I know what it feels like to be the one left behind; I know what it is to come home to an empty house; I know what it is to awaken in an empty bed; I know what it is to find a hummingbird’s nest and not have the person who would appreciate it most be there to share it.
I watched Jane die.
So I walk, I write, I plead, I beg. I have touched a grief so profound I cannot bear the thought of another tasting its vileness.
Walking with Jane
I don’t walk for Jane–I walk with her. I walk with her to try to save others the pain and humiliation she went through. I walk with her to prevent others from experiencing the grinding loneliness that is the life of a widow or widower after the death of their love.
I made a comedian cry last week…
We walk to end NET cancer for the 33, for the 231, for the 12,000–and for all those who die from it without knowing they had it.
That’s what keeps me going.
