Last Sunday morning my wife and I enjoyed a nice breakfast together while sitting at the bar of a local breakfast joint. A gentleman sat down next to us and after greeting us with morning salutations a conversation commenced. We chatted about the weather and other such mundane pleasantries before the conversation took a surprising direction as our new friend proceeded to share with us that his wife had just passed away….from cancer.
It was a sad story that this local church pastor shared with us, his wife lost her battle with pancreatic cancer only a few months ago and he, as would be expected, was having a very hard time dealing with it. During the hour or so that we spent chatting over pancakes we each shared our stories of cancer. His was a story love and loss with a very sad ending and mine a story of perseverance with the final chapters yet to be written. We were two strangers who met over pancakes who were talking about the life and death struggles of cancer within five minuets of meeting each other. How does this happen, how does the topic of cancer so easily come up over pancakes with a stranger?
Later that day I went to my storage unit where I’m storing all of the tools from the cabinet shop that I closed down due to my inability to work for the past 4 years. It’s always a stressful experience for me to visit our storage units, it always feels like failure. In one unit is my 30 year collection of tools and in the other is everything that my wife and I own except for what we have with us in the 10ft by 10ft room in the friends home that we are currently living in. When I walk into this unit filled with a lifetime collection of tools, a collection that I am in the process of selling, it feels like the loss of a dream. It makes me so sad to see all of our stuff stacked floor to ceiling in two metal rooms. Anyway…..so there I am going through my storage unit pulling my precious tools out so I can take photos and list them for sale online when a young lady opens the unit next to mine. She was by herself so I offered to help her with a heavy box and that interaction led to a conversation. She told me that the unit was full of all of her deceased fathers worldly possessions. He had recently passed away from cancer and this was the first time that she had gotten up the courage to visit the unit. We chatted back and forth over the afternoon as we each went about our tasks, I think in some way we each found strength in knowing there was someone next door who knew the struggles and hardships that this disease can cause.
We worked in our units for 3 or 4 hours and throughout the afternoon I kept hearing two words coming from the unit next door, this gal who’s father just passed away from cancer kept repeating two words that I could totally relate to, two simple yet effective words. Each time I heard these two words next door I would holler out the same two words. The two words were, FUCK CANCER. I must have said them a dozen times that afternoon. Anyone else within hearing distance heard FUCK CANCER a couple of dozen times that afternoon, it was like a game of ping pong and the ball was fuck cancer.
As the afternoon waned she shared her story with me and I in return shared mine with her. At the end of our chance meeting she told me that she found hope and strength in this random encounter. She confided in me that she has been putting off this trip to the storage unit since her fathers death because she was so saddened by the loss.
We talked about how so many of us go through life never saying a single word to the dozens of strangers that we pass each day and here we were a couple of strangers, or should I say friends only just met for the first time, having an intimate conversation. A conversation about cancer, death and loss, overcoming overwhelming obstacles and the challenges that life puts in our paths. Two strangers yelling FUCK CANCER back and forth for four hours. We talked about how we see so many people each day but never interact with any of them, how most of us instantly pass judgement on others based on one brief look.
As we parted ways that afternoon the last words I heard from her was FUCK CANCER and as I took the elevator down to my truck I nodded to myself and quietly and said FUCK Cancer to the universe……. but mostly to an empty elevator.
There is love and strength that can be found in the chance encounter of a stranger……if you give it a chance.
We should open our eyes and open our hearts, greet people with a smile and a kind word even, or especially if they themselves are a total asshat.
We all have our own challenges, we all have our own road blocks and issues, we all have our set backs and our own shit days. The next time you see someone that looks like they are in a funk, the next time you see someone that looks pissed off, instead of thinking less of them or giving them offer them a smile or a hug or perhaps a pancake or if nothing else just back off and give them some space.
You never know, that person could be a total twat waffle or they could be the coolest person ever that may have just lost someone to cancer or they themselves may have just been diagnosed, you just never know.
Don’t be so easy to judge others, kindness and empathy go a long way.
We need more kindness,
We need more empathy in this cancerous world of ours.
We need more love.
We need more understanding.
Perhaps we need more pancakes….
…..perhaps not.
Musings by OZ 