"Go On"

Much has been written about cancer, and I have read a good bit of it.  Most of it I did not find useful or true to my own experience.  Some writers advised keeping a positive attitude and thinking positive thoughts, although the studies suggest that a cancer patient’s attitude does not impact outcomes.  Some discussed the anger and the “Why me?” they experienced that followed diagnosis.  This, as well, I did not find to be my experience.  (I’ve always believed that “shit happens; we often have no control over it; and, you deal.)  Still others discussed that even in remission and five, ten or more years down the road, they never escaped the specter of cancer; it taints their every day and many moments of each day.  I did not experience this either.  Other friends have even told me to pray and read the Bible.  I have read the Bible, somewhat, and even prayed, not recently, but just what might I gather if things turn out well?  God favored me and rewarded me for prayer?  And, what if things go south?  God ignored me or doesn’t exist?  Yet others offer, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”  That’s just bullshit (See Christopher Hitchens’ essay published in Vanity Fair four days after his death from esophageal cancer).  Above all others, the stance I find most annoying is that, “cancer is a blessing.”  Sorry, but survive as I have so far, that thought and the justifications for it never had resonance for me.  So, I begin my story with a very real question of why bother at all?  And, honestly, at this point, I don’t know that I have an answer, or will, even if I go on from here.  But, go on I will, because if cancer has a lesson, going on, just as we do when no dark clouds of mortality are looming on the horizon, is it.

-- John R. Ritter