Blogging and the "D" word

I have been reading other people’s cancer blogs. (A simple Google search will get you there.) I started doing this because I was curious how others address cancer in terms of style and content, but now I am hooked on several blogs. There are actually several blogging moms like myself. I don’t know these women, but I feel an affinity with them. We are all going through similar things. I know, I know. I really should just join a cancer support group here in Austin instead of lurking on other people’s blogs.

Yesterday I found myself on one woman’s cancer blog. I was devastated to learn that she died just a few days ago. Her last entry simply said, “good bye.” I was so, so sad to read her words. I did not know this woman, yet the words seem to put me at her bedside in those final moments. These blogs are so intensely intimate in such a public way. They are compelling because they are stories about real people in real time. Should I be allowed to know so much about other’s people’s lives, even deaths?

As luck (or fate) would have it, while I was reading the blog, I was also listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross show on NPR. Terry's guest was talking about her latest book regarding death during the Civil War. (WARNING: major name-dropping coming up.) The guest was Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard. A few years ago, I actually nibbled crackers and chatted briefly with Drew at a Radcliffe social event. At the time, Drew was the Dean of Radcliffe and David was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard. Drew has no clue who I am, but I have followed her in the press like a groupie as she moved from Radcliffe Dean to the president of Harvard.

Towards the end of the interview on NPR, Terry asked Drew if her research on death during the Civil War influenced how she viewed death now. Terry mentioned that Drew is a breast and thyroid cancer survivor. Drew said that death was ever present in the mid 1800’s and this closeness to death was viewed as a way to make life more meaningful. Now, she said, we pretend death does not exist. We don’t like to talk or think about it. Drew said, however, “that when you are forced to think about death, life comes into a very sharp focus.” In this sense, Drew said she now thinks about death in a very 19th century way: thinking about death can enrich a life, rather that detract from it.

Needless to say, yesterday was a sad, reflective day for me. I was reminded of the deadly reality of cancer, yet its power to bring renewed meaning to life.