I got sent this the other day by my friend Anne. Unusually for her she was reticent to post it; she is usually quite straightforward about such things. Knowing the bare outlines of what likely inspired it I was touched and slightly troubled. A close friend of hers is fighting breast cancer, hopefully to win as best she can.
This was inspired, if that's the word, by the waiting… in an anteroom of an oncology ward. A place where courage is simple, yet beyond what most, fortunately, will ever need to approach.
So with her permission I post this for all those that fight. ~~~ Kristina.L.S
One Day
by Anne Gray
One day I know the hurt will stop
And leave me free from pain.
Until that time life must go on
With just hope to keep me sane.
Every day there’s work to be done
But I cannot show how much it draws
The soul from me in pieces one by one
To fight that real and vicious foe.
There is no stopping
Giving up is not a thought
Every day’s a battle
That just has to be fought.
Friends are golden to join in the fight
Though sight unseen they prop you up
With heartfelt words they really mean
It almost makes us like a team.
And with their help
One day the hurt will stop!
Comments
vicious foe
Let's hope Anne's friend beats it! I've known three women that did, all within a year of each other back in
the 80's, all diagnosed at different stages of the neoplasm's development, having different levels of medical coverage, different options available to them. Oddly, or maybe not, the one who everyone felt the worst for, dirt poor and had a double-mastectomy with no reconstruction, probably has had the happiest life since then. A really grateful, positive woman who everybody who meets her just goes WOW! But all I'm really saying here is not to compare lives and attitudes and draw assumptions from that (what long time cancer-survivor Susan Sontag called "illness as metaphor"), but just to give three examples that it is possible. Good poem!
~~~Laika
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.