by:Elizabeth Edwards
Part of what is so hard about having cancer is sharing the news with your family. The difficulties are compounded when your family includes small children, as mine did in November 2004 when my diagnosis was confirmed.
Our youngest children were six and four. I had to tell them: I knew that I would lose my hair; it was going to be hard to keep it a secret. (I thought, naively, that that would be the only way they could tell.)
In my battle against victimization, I decided to cut my hair off before it fell out. I told the children about the cancer before the scheduled haircut day. “Mommy has a bump,” I said. “And that bump is called cancer. Cancer is very bad, but I will get rid of the bump and the cancer by taking really strong medicine.”
They looked bored. Somber, but bored. Or maybe just bored. “And that medicine is so strong that it will make my hair fall out.” I think it cheered them up.
“Your hair’s gonna fall out? All of it? When? Can I see?” When Kevin, the fellow who cut my hair, came over, the children watched and then rubbed their hands on the little fuzz that Kevin had left.
Jack and John volunteered to let Kevin cut theirs off, too, but I convinced them it wouldn’t help me to see more bald people in my family. I felt they were a part of this fight without going through this sweet gesture of solidarity.
The children never acted scared, and we never talked about the fact that some people die of cancer. When, on the news, they were announcing somebody’s death from cancer, as when Peter Jennings died or when Dana Reeve lost her fight, we’d switch the channel immediately. Cancer can still kill me, but there’s no reason for them to spend their days – or nights – thinking that it will.I thought, wrongly it turned out, that we had painted a rosy, even funny picture of the upcoming fight with cancer. The not-so-unhappy first grade picture of a terrible disease. Maybe, like the death of Bambi’s mother, the sad fact was lost in the storyline they enjoyed: in our case, my baldness.
But they were knocked more off balance by my primary school rendition of my disease than I had suspected, particularly Emma Claire, who was six years old. It would show up in a letter she would write or in the answer to a teacher’s question.
There, her Christmas wish would be for me to be better, for cancer not to hurt me anymore. But with me, she was always stoic. If we all acted strong with one another, it was easier for each of us to actually be strong. So we did. Even Emma Claire, at age six.
Read more about Elizabeth Edwards in her new book, Saving Graces.
