My wife’s father is someone I never had the chance to meet; he passed from this life years before my wife and I ever met. I’ve been told that his death was due, in large part, to mesothelioma. Another brush I’ve had with cancer is when both my mother and the mother of my next-door neighbors came down simultaneously with breast cancer; their mom died, but mine lived, back then.
As I grow older, thoughts of how cancer has robbed people, including me, of a chance to know certain people, or have them around as long as might otherwise have been possible, weighs more heavily on me. The power of writing is sometimes not purely creative, but therapuetic. I can’t meet Andy, or bring back LouAnn, but through writing about them, I can at least work out how I feel about missing those opportunities.
It’s a poor substitute for the real expereince of knowing someone; but in lieu of a better solution, it’s really all a person has, sometimes. The power of words, memory, imagination and the expressions of the heart.
