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I was just scouting the internet and I found this blog by Tzipi Caton. Here is an excerpt of something she put up that illustrates my point about what people with cancer feel like when people avoid the word cancer. Tzipi had cancer as a teen, here is a brief sketch she wrote:
JACP: “Hey, I was given your number by _______, and was told you were the one to talk to regarding a teaching job for the coming September?”
HER: “Have you been to seminary?”
JACP: “Uh, no.”
HER: “Well we only take girls who have been to seminary.”
JACP: “But I got married right out of school so I didn’t have the chance to even go to sem!”
HER: “What school did you graduate from?”
JACP: “______”
HER: “Oh, so did you have my friend _______ in 12th grade?”
JACP: “I didn’t actually go to 12th grade. I graduated school at 16.”
HER: “What? Why?”
JACP: “Because I was sick and I completed the whole high school curriculum while I was out being treated.”
HER: “What were you sick with?”
JACP: “Hodgkin’s.”
HER: “What’s that?”
JACP: “A type of cancer.”
HER: “Don’t say that word!! Poo poo poo!”
JACP: “Excuse me?”
HER: “That word is an ayin hara! Don’t say it out loud!”
JACP: “I’m sorry; that word is a part of my life. I feel that by calling it Poo poo poo or spitting on the floor, you are putting down what I went through.”
HER: “That word causes terrible things.”
JACP: “In my opinion fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself.”
HER: “That’s YOUR opinion. The Rabbanim have said not to say that word.”
JACP: “I’d like to have a talk with those rabbanim.”
HER: “How old are you anyway?”
JACP: “Just seventeen”
HER: “And you expect me to give you a teaching job? What grades do you think a 17 year old can teach?”
JACP: “I’d like to teach any grade from 5th through 8th.”
HER: “It’s not going to happen. What makes you think you’re qualified?”
JACP: “I have life experience. I’m married. I’m young and can identify with them. I graduated with top marks…What else do I need?”
HER: “Wait a minute. You were sick.”
JACP: “So I said.”
HER: “But you’re married!”
JACP: “Uh yeah.”
HER: “What’s wrong with your husband? Is he divorced? Was he also sick? Why did he marry you?”
(It was a good thing this was a phone conversation. I would have strangled the woman in person.)
JACP: “My husband married me because it was bashert. Hashem put us together and that’s the way it was meant to be.”
HER: “But what’s wrong with him?”
JACP: “What do you mean? Why does anything have to be wrong with him?”
HER: “Because a normal boy with a good background and from a good home doesn’t just go and marry a girl who was sick with some life threatening disease.”
JACP: “There’s nothing wrong with my husband. He had struggles in his life as I’ve had mine and that made us stronger and better people and when the time came for us to meet it didn’t matter what each of us had in our pasts, what mattered was where we were standing at that point in time, and as it happened, Hashem planned for us to be at the same place in life at the same time. What more can you possibly expect?”
HER: “But I would never let my son marry a girl who was sick!”
JACP: “But would you have a guarantee that your daughter in law won’t ever get sick after her wedding? What? Do you think I was born with a stamp on my head that said ‘I am going to have cancer–“
HER: “POO POO POO!!!!”
JACP: “-at age 16′? You think people know these things in advance?”
HER: “But still…”
JACP: “As a matter of fact, I am actually healthier than your son. I go to the doctor every few months and get scanned and have thorough checkups that your son will probably never get in his life. Every six months I get a clean bill of health. Can you son even say that he goes to the doctor every six months? Does he even know what’s going on in his own body?”
HER: “So you can’t control what happens later, but if I had the choice of having him marry a clean girl or a sick girl, I would never pick you!”
JACP: “That’s just fine Mrs. ___________. Your son wouldn’t be good enough for me anyway. See, I went through so much already that my neshama is cleaner, a little more elevated. My husband and I see the world a lot differently than most people do, and we are more than happy to be this way. Your son would never see eye to eye with me and I would never want to have to stoop to his level to see life the way he does. I’m so over that. I would never marry your son anyway”
(Besides for which, I’d never want her as a mom in law!)