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Down to Earth
by Colleen Hughes
Editor-in-Chief
Remember the E-mailed “Fund
the Fight, Find a Cure” postage stamp item we ran in last issue’s “Messages”
department? Lorraine Kennedy of Meriden, Conn., wrote recently, “I’ve been
getting those beautiful stamps since they came out in 1998.” Because of people
like her (and many of you, if our mail is any indication), eight million
dollars have gone directly to breast cancer research. I hadn’t known about the
stamps before getting that E-mail at work one morning. At lunchtime that day I
ran over to the post office and bought a sheet, anxious to do something to help
fight “that ol’ cancer,” as my Mam-maw used to call it.
My grandmother was 75
when she died of breast cancer, but her death still seemed unfair; she and
Gramps were enjoying their golden years. Gramps had their travel plans mapped
out far into the future. He liked museums, Mam-maw preferred souvenir shops—they
worked it out. She never, ever called him by his given name, only Sugar, even
when she was mad at him, which wasn’t often. He called her Chčre (French for
dear), but with his Cajun accent it sounded like chat (French for cat). Other
people called her Dot or Aunt Dot, her sister called her Dorothy, and my mama
called her Mama. I guess it was me, her first grandchild, who started “Mam-maw.”
I was 29 when she died
in 1990, and I hadn’t had enough of her grandmothering. I wanted to talk
long-distance on many, many more Sunday nights, Gramps on one phone, Mam-maw on
another, both trying to get their say in, and me calling collect (at their
insistence) from New York to New Orleans. When I visited, Mam-maw would get up
from her sick bed and escort me into her walk-in closet, where she kept the
weekly grocery money Gramps continued to give her long after she was unable to
do the shopping. She’d pull a couple of twenties from her slip drawer, insisting
I buy something just for me. I usually put it toward another plane ticket home.
And I went often.
That ol’ cancer made Mam-maw
so mad sometimes. Chemotherapy could be so inconvenient. Like when it interfered
with her Saints football games. She and Gramps had season tickets to our beloved
New Orleans NFL team, but sometimes after chemo she wasn’t up to going. The
doctor gave Mam-maw a tip when she first started that awful treatment. Pac-Man
was “in,” and Dr. Brown suggested she picture one of those chomping heads eating
away at cancer cells in its path.
Mam-maw liked Dr. Brown.
Charlie Brown, she called him, because that’s how the entire city of New Orleans
knew him. Charlie Brown was the Saints’ team doctor. After she had to give up
her seat at the Superdome, she yelled at the TV and slapped the arm of her
recliner when the Saints made a mistake (which was often), and would tell Dr.
Brown on her next visit what they should do differently. That old team could
really get her riled up, just like that ol’ cancer.
I feel a thrill when
someone beats cancer, especially when it’s breast cancer and the odds say it
won’t happen. Look at Suzie Eller! I was delighted when she corrected
a mistake in our editing of her story: “It’s been eight years since my healing,”
she said, “not just seven.”
Mam-maw didn’t beat that
ol’ cancer—at least not for as long as I had prayed she would, which would have
been forever. Hers isn’t a story of miraculous healing, like so many of the ones
we hear about at Angels on Earth, those stories that give us all hope. But I saw
other, quieter miracles during Mam-maw’s illness—surprising reprieves, the birth
of her first great-grandchild, nurses who arrived as strangers and left as
friends. I can’t wait till those are the only kinds of miracles associated with
breast cancer and a cure takes care of the rest.
Meanwhile,
click here if you could use
a sheet of stamps?
The above article originally
appeared in the November/December 1999
issue of Angels
On Earth. To subscribe to Angels On Earth click
here.
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