Writing Through Cancer

She’s lived in my memory for sixty years.

Death steals everything except our stories.

These two final lines of Jim Harrison’s poem, “Larson’s Holstein Bull,” linger in my mind.  In the poem, the narrator remembers a young girl and her untimely death from being gored by a bull.  The poem is short, the descriptions lean and straightforward, but the impact of the final line is profound:  Death steals everything except our stories.

Stories were part of our evening last night, as we attended a Passover Seder at our friends’ home.  I had experienced a Passover meal once before, but it was a new experience for my husband, one we both enjoyed—not just for the traditions inherent in the Jewish holiday, but for the re-telling of the Jewish story that is part of the celebration.  As I listened, I thought of the Easter holidays my family celebrated throughout my childhood.  We had traditions too, rooted in Christian beliefs and in my father’s extended family’s love of family get-togethers.  Like the Seder meal we enjoyed last night, Easter Sunday was dominated by a traditional meal, many of the recipes handed down from my grandmother to her daughters.  Hers, my aunts said, were passed along from her mother-in-law when as a new bride, it was quickly apparent my grandmother had little experience in the kitchen!

What I remember most about our family celebrations, whether Easter, Christmas or Thanksgiving, was the life around the table.  Aunts, uncles, and cousins filled the room and sat at designated tables.  Since I was one of the older grandchildren, born in between three young adult cousins and a batch of younger cousins born a few years after World War II, it meant I “graduated” to the adult table earlier than most—a privilege I quietly cherished.  At the adult table, I learned about family history, stories told and re-told  by my uncles at every celebration.  Their stories were embellished each year as my uncles repeated the tales of my grandparents’ years as homesteaders and ranchers in Northern California, and I never tired of hearing them.  These were stories of our family’s inheritance and legacy, stories well told and much enjoyed.  They mattered  to me because of the laughter, the history, and the sense of belonging I felt hearing them.  They were instrumental in my understanding of who I was, where I was from.

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on…

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers…

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks…

(From:  “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” in The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. 1994

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun… Another table, another group of friends, is also on my mind this morning.  I’m working on a booklet today, a collection of the stories written and shared by the men and women in my “Writing through Cancer” group at Moores UCSD.  As writing series winds down, everyone submits pieces of writing done during our ten weeks together.  Their stories are about cancer, yes, but much more.  They are ones that represent a whole life, not one solely defined by illness.

Cancer, novelist Alice Hoffman wrote in a New York Times essay, need not be a person’s whole book, only a chapter… (August 14, 2000).  In the shock of a cancer diagnosis or the weeks of surgeries and treatments that follow, it’s easy to forget, for a time, we have more than cancer stories to tell.  We may be temporarily robbed of our voices, but as we write and share them with each other, we rediscover and honor our lives.

It’s cancer that brings people to my writing groups.  Cancer is the starting point, where we begin, but as the weeks progress, other stories emerge, ones of love, family, even childhood.  Writing and sharing our stories affirms our lives, our legacies.  Our stories say:  “This is my life.  This was important to me.  This is how I have become who I am.”

But in order to make you understand, to give you my life, I must tell you a story—and there are so many, and so many—stories of childhood, stories of school, love, marriage, and death…
–Virginia Woolf

 Our stories live long after our lives have ended.  Think of the stories you tell of your grandparents, parents or other loved ones who are no longer living.  It’s through story that we remember and honor them.  It’s through story that we say, This is who I am.  This is my life.  William Carlos Williams, physician and poet, offered important advice to a medical student:  Their stories, yours, mine—it’s what we carry with us on this trip we take…we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.

It’s each person’s stories I carry with me long after the writing workshop ends and long after some of the writers’ lives are lost to cancer.  Through their stories, I learn from them.  I remember them–their faces, words, and lives.  It’s why our stories matter.  We are our stories.  They shape us and act as the lens through which we see the world. Through story, we make sense of our lives, reclaim our voices, and learn that our stories have the power to touch others’ hearts.  Cancer may be what brings everyone to my writing groups, but it’s in our shared stories we discover the glue that binds us together.

Stories—the small personal ones that bring us close as well as those of the larger world—foster compassion.  In the telling of our personal lives, we’re reminded of our basic, human qualities—our vulnerabilities and strengths, foolishness and wisdom, who we are…, through the exchange of stories, [you] help heal each other’s spirits.

–Patrice Vecchione, Writing and the Spiritual Life, 2001

 Your stories matter.  Why not write them?