Family Cancer

There are many ideas circulating about what causes cancer. Some of the consensus seems to indicate that cancer cells are regular cells that have gone wrong somehow. Some of the latest research in this regard seems to indicate that these wayward cells originate as repair cells, going in to mend a broken part of the body but the fix goes awry and the cell that was meant to heal changes somehow into something sinister and slow and lethal.




Daniel not only meant to apologize to his wife for forgetting their anniversary when he brought that bouquet of flowers home with him that Friday afternoon, he also bought them as a way to soften the blow of the bad news he had to deliver.

Theirs had become a life of consistency, of predictable patterns. It was a peaceful, harmonious sort of rhythm - a pattern honed through years of fitful trial and error. In her mind, what kept their life from devolving into a drone-like repetition were the yearly milestones, birthdays, holidays, and company parties, that punctuated the everyday routine. She looked forward to these interruptions. She anticipated the wrestling over little details like what gift to buy, what food to make, what dress to wear.

Her favorite of these yearly celebrations was their anniversary. Though she never spoke of it, she saw it as the high point of the year not because the date in June neatly bisected the year in two but because of all that it represented. Though it wasn't always harmonious or easy, she truly cherished the life they had built together. To her, their anniversary was a time to remember, to savor, to memorialize again their commitment to one another.

For all that it meant to her, their anniversaries were usually a simple affair. Dinner, a walk in the park or a scenic drive, long conversations, remembrances, a chance to laugh over charged arguments that they now saw as being about nothing, a chance to forgive. These nights would end in passionate consummation, sometimes slow and tender, sometimes ravenous and hungry, always satisfying.

Then for the first time, he had forgotten. He dropped the ball and life for her felt out of balance. That year their anniversary fell on a Tuesday. She gave him until Thursday night to realize his mistake and this gave her two days to plan on how to remind him.




Daniel had other things on his mind. He too loved celebrating their anniversary but this week his mind had been elsewhere, wrapped up in weightier matters. His problems began the week before. He had been in for his yearly physical last Monday. His doctor's office called on Wednesday morning asking him to come in for a few more tests. Probably nothing, they said. Thursday afternoon the office called again. This time his doctor was on the phone. He asked him if he was sitting down, to take a seat if he was standing.



On weeknights, she always arrived home first so, domestic as it sounds, she made dinner. He, in return, would cook through the weekend. That Thursday night as part of her plan, she prepared a simple salad. She placed chopped, rinsed lettuce in a large glass bowl in the center of the table. Beside the bowl she placed Italian dressing (his) and Ranch (hers). It was a very simple salad, no croutons, no onions, no olives. Not even a sprinkling of cheese or of fresh ground pepper. Just the lettuce.

He came in wet from the rain. She could tell it had been a hard day for him at the office by the way he dropped his bag, the way he let his shoes drop as he took them off instead of neatly laying them down. "Good," she thought.