Tipping Our Hats in Tribute

One of the sad truths about living today is that most of us know, or will know, someone with cancer. In working in medical publishing, I see cases of it every day in patients who usually don't live. But while the disease itself isn't contagious, I found recently that the love and generosity given to those who are touched by it often is.

A woman from my neighborhood and local church was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost a year ago. Growing up, she was artsy, creative, and modern. One of my earliest memories is visiting her house with a broken porcelain doll (I don't know why my mother trusted me with them) to have it re-fired by the kiln she conveniently had in her basement. In hearing about her diagnosis, the motion to support her was swift and seamless. When she began to lose her hair, my mother and other women from our church purchased kooky hats to wear to church with her every Sunday. It was an indoor Kentucky Derby. And she, of course, responded to her situation exactly the way you would have thought--with generosity, class, humor, and tenderness. Even in the middle of her own struggle, she visited my mother after she had had surgery on her foot and learning that my mother was having trouble finding comfortable shoes, she removed her own and walked back to her car in socks. I wondered, when I heard that story, if she thought she might not need her shoes anymore; then I realized it wouldn't have mattered. She would have given them anyway--she had that kind of heart.

This woman passed away a few weeks ago, right at the end when they thought everything was clear. Instead of a funeral, they had a day of celebration where friends came to share their memories with her family. The women in our church paid a final tribute to her in all wearing hats the Sunday after she died. To wish that cancer, and like diseases, didn't exist would be an understatement. Still, out of situations like this, I am also awakened when I see the sense of community, service, and heartfelt sympathy that often follows it.

This woman's husband--one of the most quiet men I have ever seen--paid his wife a final compliment in including the following poem in her funeral announcement. These lines, from one of my most favorite poems by Lord Tennyson, is the perfect way to tip our hats to a woman who was able to fly Sky Priority to heaven.

Tho much is taken, much abides; and tho
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

To a woman who never yielded; to a community of heroic hearts.