October 4, 2010

• Cancer Doesn’t Care: NBCAM

  

  

  October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Thanks to a small Xanga blog called “The Theologian’s Cafe” , I really don’t think anyone on Xanga is unaware of this fact. Dan hosts a “Save The Boobs” campaign every year at this time. (The “o’s” in the banner are from a photo on the Save The Boobs blog from 2009)

  As many of my readers already know, I’m pretty familiar with the terrible disease of cancer. I was the primary caregiver to my friend Joel (referred to as Cancerboy in this blog for many years, with his humorous permission) during the last three years of his short life. Cancerboy didn’t suffer from “breast cancer”. Although men CAN contract breast cancer. In fact, cancer doesn’t care, as I wrote in a “top blog” from this past May, where it strikes. It can strike anyone, anywhere, and is a constant fear in my life, because not only Joel, but others in my orbit have either suffered from, or perished from the disease. Knock wood, a co-worker, whom I’ve identified as “Angel” in earlier blog entries, now in her forties, had a masectomy in her 20s, and has been in remission since then. My sister had uterine cancer in her thirties, and is currently in remission, but had to have most of her “female parts” removed in order to stop the disease. There is no cure, and it is recommended that EVERYONE take the necessary steps to detect early onset of this most devastating disease.

  Dan has promised to add a section to his “Save The Boobs” campaign this winter for men, and so before taking my daily power walk around the senior mobile home park where I live, I grabbed my tripod and snapped the above photo, showing my “man boobs” as it were. As most of my regular readers know, I’m never shy about showing my tanned naked body. I’m pretty active and healthy for guy fast approaching the BIG 6-0.

  I neglected to offer a tribute post for my late friend Cancerboy this year, the second since his passing, so this entry will serve a number of purposes. ONE: Go to the Breast Cancer Awareness Website. Give generously. Cancer doesn’t care, but humanity does, and every penny can help to speed a possible cure. TWO: Save the Boobs, with Xanga’s own “TheoDan” in order to raise awareness. I just did! THREE: This is a tribute to my friend Joel (Cancerboy) who passed from this existence too early in his short life, at the age of 53. I never knew how much I really loved the guy till I knew he was going to die. And now he’s gone, “thanks” to the fact that cancer doesn’t care, and never will.

   

  “The Cancerboy Diaries: Entry the Last
  (For Joel)”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  4/23/09   4:48 a.m. pdt

  You probably thought I’d written you off
  after the last poem you couldn’t read,
  even though you never did get the time
  to read the rest of them anyway.
  Well, perhaps you are reading them now
  and now it’s time to write the last entry in the diary.

  I told you I couldn’t close this particular book of life last year
  You remember, don’t you, on the night you died?
  It was too soon, too close, too sad.
  Your adventure might have ended for you
  but not for me  (for us)
  Yet, as the adventure ended so suddenly,
  I couldn’t find the words showing through the hurt
  I couldn’t finish the sentence
  seeing as how life had placed it’s period on your’s forever.

  It’s so difficult to really believe you’re gone
  You always seemed to be in the shadows,
  reading a sci fi book series,
  or listening to those Who cds
  (You know I saved your cds,
  and I can’t find the fourth one in the Who box
  Let me know where it is if you remember)
  Endlessly flipping channels on the bigscreen
  And
  Always with an blustery and unchanging opinion

  You loved those two cats.

  I had to let the cats go,
  I couldn’t check back up on them after I took
  them to the kitty cat shelter
  I couldn’t bear to hear they had been put to sleep
  So now I live alone,
  and I’m liking it

  But

  The quiet is almost too.
  You weren’t that social,
  but you were a good friend,
  and I miss you at times like this
  when the memory of your
  seeming irrationality overbears
  the solid truth of now.

  The back cover of your book of life
  is slowly closing,
  your ashes sit in a silver urn
  in the top corner of the mausoleum
  You questioned your afterlife,
  and now you’ve had a year to know
  to see
  to experience life as it’s lived without you
  Good bye my dear iconoclastic friend
  Maybe soon we’ll play another game of chess
  Or listen to the heavenly angels sing punk music
  in the clouds. 

  RELATED LINKS:

  National Breast Cancer Awareness Month Official Website

  Save the Boobs Xanga site

  The Cancerboy Diaries: Joel Wayne Birney Memoriam Post from July 15, 2008

  Cancerboy: A Reminisence

  Cancer Doesn’t Care: An Essay From May 2010

  Posted: October 02, 2010 6:12 PM

  • 9:55 am
  • 17 Comments