This month Angel Foundation began its six-week education and support series. Each week we focus on a particular theme—during the first week the theme of change takes center stage in each group. When cancer comes into a family, it brings with it an enormous amount of change. Monday night in the adult group we had no difficulty generating a list of 40+ changes and we could have added more. The changes named spanned all aspects of their lives from practical, day-to-day things like balancing the demands of treatment and parenting responsibilities to more existential changes in the way participants understand their place in the future. Many of the changes are beautiful. For example, strained relationships with loved ones become mended or participants realize just how many people are there to support them. Participants expressed that they have gained an even deeper understanding of their love for their children that guides them through the trials of treatment.
However, not surprisingly, so many of these changes involve deep and penetrating loss—loss of control, loss of energy, a loss of freedom, or loss of a sense of security. When looking at the volume of loss families experience when facing cancer, the disease can seem so powerful. How does a family respond to all this loss? Unfortunately there are no easy answers. But sometimes naming those losses in a group of people who not only understand what you are grieving but share those same losses, can lighten the load and increase your strength to move forward. There is tremendous power in that group experience that is stronger than the cancer. Individuals can then focus on what they have and what they have gained that cancer can’t take away. It is like the poem whose author is unknown, “What Cancer Cannot Do.”
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What Cancer Cannot Do Author: Unknown
Cancer is so limited… It cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot corrode faith. It cannot eat away peace. It cannot destroy confidence. It cannot kill friendship. It cannot shut out memories. It cannot silence courage. It cannot reduce eternal life. It cannot quench the Spirit.
This weekend that poem and the discussion of loss in group was on my mind as I read a new book by Michael Feinstein entitled, The Gershwins and Me. What an amazing legacy of music George and Ira Gershwin created. I have always enjoyed one of their songs in particular, “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sang it in two different movies. The premise of the lyrics is that memories shared by loved ones are not lost when those people are separated. But that song has new meaning to me now after reading the book. I didn’t realize when George composed the music and his brother, Ira, the lyrics, that George was living with an undiagnosed brain tumor. Feinstein eloquently describes the meaning that song had for George right before his death and how the song filled the airways after his death commemorating his life.
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In the midst of the aching challenges that can accompany a cancer diagnosis this song is a poignant reminder of the limits of the disease. To me it also exemplifies the power that comes from being part of a larger community of people who can share the experience and in some way lighten the load.
They Can’t Take That Away from Me George and Ira Gershwin
The way you wear your hat The way you sip your tea The memory of all that No, no they can’t take that away from me The way your smile just beams The way you sing off key The way you haunt my dreams No, no they can’t take that away from me
We may never, never meet again On the bumpy road to love Still I’ll always, always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife The way we danced till three The way you changed my life No, no they can’t take that away from me No, they can’t take that away from me
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We may never, never meet again On that bumpy road to love Still I’ll always, always keep the memory of The way you hold your knife The way we danced till three The way you changed my life No, no they can’t take that away from me No, they can’t take that away from me
Billie Holiday singing in 1957: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd7CZybUZWw
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly5Tb8UGg-I&feature=related
By Missy Lundquist, co-director of Angel Foundation’s Facing Cancer Together program.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHAT
