Six Letter Word

 

 

Cancer is a six letter word.  You wake up one morning, same as you did yesterday and the day before, but now everything is different, the color of the sky, the way the light falls on your favorite flowers, the way you look at life and your family, it’s all changed.  Cancer has come through the back door, the disease has parked itself in the middle of your life and now you and all the people you love have to deal with the consequences.

 

Writing about cancer, using breast cancer as a back drop for fiction has taken me on a journey unexpected.  Someone said I made cancer a character, if I did, it was not deliberate.  My intention was never that.  Most of us can relate to this disease because it has touched us in some way, left its personal stamp upon us, a family member or a friend.  The six letter word has taken people away, shortened lives, taken young and old, no discrimination and no rhyme or reason. 

 

I recently attended the Kickoff Breakfast for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.  In a large convention hall with handmade quilts hung as decorations, hundreds of people sat bound together by the pink ribbon disease.  At every table there were survivors, at every table someone had been touched by cancer.  At the podium, speaker after speaker told their story, some coming back year after year praising the work of the American Cancer Society and others coming back to say somewhere in the middle of the months that passed from last year to this, they were diagnosed with cancer.  The words spoken were touching and inspirational.  People rallied to the cause and left pledging to create teams to walk on October 19^th in Central Park.

 

 I was there not because of the reasons that others were but because I decided one day like any other day that the character in my story would have breast cancer, that she would be a young woman, wife and mother who struggles with the loss of hope. 

 

The slogan for Making Strides is: Hope starts with Us.  Come join me and thousands of other folk on October 19^th in Central Park.  I’ll be there with Belly of the Whale, helping to pass on the message of hope and survival.  Fight-the-fight.

 

Blog what you see, think, feel and hear…

 

Linda Merlino 

 

Blog Writer’s Laryngitis

Writer’s laryngitis, an ailment that on one level renders you unable to speak and on another level, unable to write, this condition is more severe than the common, ordinary: writer’s block.  The latter can be remedied by long sessions looking at a blank page and even longer days in your jammies.  Writer’s laryngitis requires medicine; the pharmacy kind of prescribed liquid that you pour onto a spoon and swallow with a grimace, then about thirty minutes later your whole body slumps over your laptop and you can’t finish a sentence never mind a paragraph.

 

Communicating is out.  Unless you are face-to-face with a pad of paper and a pen, you can not speak to the outside world.  Sleep is the elixir.  Long, uninterrupted lengths of dormancy that does not allow the REM state to be active.  The golden liquid, that costs a week of lunches, has the ability to produce such a coma.  Nothing else matters but the next dose of Tussionex.

 

For nearly three weeks I’ve had to be a listener, someone “up there” wanted me to be quiet, to sit on my opinion and to take notes.  Protesting was too much effort. I sipped tea and curled up in a corner.  But the world did not stop spinning while I was silent.  No, it went on with or without my voice.  My writer’s laryngitis recovered quicker once I made peace with listening.  Another reminder of what I need to do and what matters most.  I’ve learned that writing words are never silent; their impact has sounds that vibrate octaves above the normal speaking voice.

 

Write what you hear, think and feel….

 

 

 Linda Merlino