Every time I think back to that one, dreadfully long year of my grandmother’s illness, I cannot help feeling grateful now. The ordeal seems less sinister from today’s point of view. Time can sweep away the darker memories of events gone by. As grueling as it was, the shadow of cancer that had fallen over us back then became, in the end, a source of good rather than evil.

The news had come all of a sudden, as is common in these cases. A pristine-white angel of a nurse told my grandmother during a medical check that there seemed to be some kind of problem with the glands in her left armpit. She was told not to worry as it was nothing modern medicine couldn’t fix. However, over the course of the following weeks, the size of the area in question grew considerably. In the end, the doctors started talking about performing surgery. Not only under grandmother’s arm, but the left side of her chest as well. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, a disease that seemed to me more suited to the shiny paper of informational leaflets rather than to real life.

My grandmother was always a very down-to-earth person. She was the lady-in-charge, always working on one high-class job or another and generally earning more than the entire family put together. She enjoyed her status, brimming with energy no matter what she did.

Her illness caused her to worry more about suddenly not being able to take care of herself rather than the actual anticipated physical discomfort. I often thought that it was this sudden fear of losing control that altered her personality the most. She never regained the self-confidence she had possessed prior to this phase of her life. However, I always admired her for regaining any at all, after such a close brush with death.

I’m not sure if anything of self-confidence could be said for the rest of our family, as we were quite used to being juggled about by the whim of Fate, God or whatever it is that runs peoples’ lives. My parents were busy people perpetually teetering over the pit of workaholism, while my brother and I had just entered the adolescent stage when one doubts everything and everyone, from fundamental human values to the correct way of peeling a banana. The cancer arrived at a time when we were all too preoccupied with our own problems to care about anything or anyone else – and boy, was it a nasty awakening!

All of a sudden, something too real had intruded our lives. We realized we quickly had to start working together. My mother was the first to regain her equilibrium and she became set on helping grandmother as much as she could. Together with my father, it was the two of them who saw the old lady through the worst. My brother and I had enough trouble dealing with the havoc this caused in our young minds. We were too unused to the harshness of the real world to be of much help.

One time, I remember feeling such anger and anxiety over a large banner sporting a warning against breast cancer. I’ve always agreed that it was important to inform as many women as possible about the danger of the illness, especially since the ones already suffering from it rarely talk about their condition. However, it was not until my grandmother became ill that I realized how these large, informative banners can sometimes serve as a brutal reminder to cancer patients. There was a huge billboard just down the street from my grandmother’s flat. It had the picture of a smiling brunette splayed all over its five square meters of advertisement space, with huge letters just below her chin that read, ‘Every fifth woman is in danger of dying from breast cancer.’ As much as I appreciated its purpose to inform, I always seethed with anger every time I passed by it. I could only think about my poor grandmother who had to look at this billboard every time she went out.

The battle with the illness itself was a strenuous experience. I will not go into the grisly details of the operation and the subsequent chemotherapy—a long and painful process that seems to scar the soul more than the physical body. Allow me to sum it up by stating that it lasted much longer than any of us would have liked, but grandmother fought fiercely. When she lost her hair, she had a wig made; when one operation resulted in the loss of her left breast, she had special underwear tailored that covered up the irregularity of her figure. My mother took care of her almost every day, driving her to and from hospitals, while I was torn between the need to be with her all the times and the fear that the smallest germ I carried into the flat could worsen my grandmother’s condition.

Perhaps I was not around as much as I should have been, but, in the end, it was probably for the best. The relationship between my mother and grandmother had been rather frosty prior to the illness and spending time together in the face of death appeared to have mended things. The two started to become very open with each other and shared important family matters that would have probably remained unsaid for the rest of their lives, had the cancer not intervened.

The disease also affected the mixed feelings that my grandmother had for my father. She was apparently not that pleased with my mother’s choice of husband and it was not until her illness, some twenty years later, that she finally developed some affection for her son-in-law. He was, after all, the one who took her to another town to see a healer (following a moment of desperation during which we decided to give alternative medicine a try.)

A man reputed to be able to cure cancer by use of energy fields was found within a day’s drive of our home and grandmother reluctantly agreed to see him. This was unlike my grandmother who was usually very rational. She was not the type to stray from the defined boundaries of traditional medicine.

I assume that direct contact with the electrodes and large magnets or whatnot that the healer used to do his job was a rather frightening experience and she must have felt awful. It was my father who accompanied the doubting old lady. With only my father around to comfort her, my grandmother became very attached to him, and, following this somewhat interesting trip, her attitude towards her son-in-law changed for the better.

Fortunately, in the end, something worked to cure my grandmother’s cancer. I have no idea whether it was the doctors in their sterile white coats or the man with the electrodes. To be honest, I really don’t care. What matters is that after a long and hard year, my grandmother recovered, and with her recovery, our family felt more united than ever. What weight did my teenage worries and my brother’s school hardships have in the face of death? What childhood wounds and injustices that my mother felt she had suffered when she was small could not be forgotten in the light of not being able to talk to her mother ever again? And how can you keep holding a grudge against a son-in-law who held your hand in the moment of your greatest fear, no matter how disagreeable you thought him to be before?

If only I am able to strip my grandmother of her very painful memories, I would do so without hesitation. However, since no one is able to do that, I am still grateful for the change it brought on the relationships within my family.

I guess, no matter how many petty feuds and arguments you might have, it is still your family who sticks by you when your world is falling apart.

Further Reading
1.  Wikipedia article on Breast Cancer