Cancer: Informing Your Family, the Fear and the Courage

As I was writing in my book tonight, I realized that most of what I was writing was really "blog" material. So, here I am writing a brief introduction to what will be my blog. The chapter I am working on is when my mother informed her brother about her cancer. It was a process. You see, for two weeks my mother would not tell her brothers and sisters. Even when she was hospitalized, she wouldn't let us tell them. She was overcome with fear, a fear she never spoke of, but was ever present when you tried to broach the subject. My 



father and I finally helped her, not overcome the fear, but rather face the fear head on, with us by her side, in a small hospital room, and her brother Bill sitting in front of her on a small hassock.

I left the hospital with an urgency to return to my mother as soon as possible. It is now 4:45 pm. By the time I get home, find the sarong, hair supplies, have a quick bite to eat and return to the hospital it will be 5:30 pm. Uncle Billy will arrive a t 6:00 pm. My mother will be anxiously waiting my arrival. As much as I want to respect all of her choices, I believe informing her family was very important to her. Also, the fear she felt about seeing her brothers and sisters had to be faced. She knew that, too. She never shared that fear, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is we listened to her, and helped her over that threshold together, with love and compassion. In the end, she did it. She met with her brother, Uncle Billy, and all was good. That meeting broke the ice. The following meetings with the rest of her family were like old times. It was the first one that held the fear, and the first one that released the fear.