Heroes who walk among us

Did you ever think about the person behind you in line at the grocery store?

Or the person driving the car in the lane opposite you on the highway?

There are heroes among us who we never, or rarely, acknowledge.

Who am I writing about? Well--there are many different categories of heroes--but today I'm especially sensitive to cancer survivors. I have been face to face with many cancer survivors--I call at least three of them friends, and this weekend after I saw the scars of the battle on my nephew and witnessed his "it's not gonna beat me" attitude I realized that cancer curvivors are truly special people.

They are members of a very special fraternity.

Cancer is destructive--we all know that, but these heroes who take the full brunt of cancer's assault in their bodies which leaves them disfigured--but alive, know it far better than we who only read about cancer or talk to the survivors.  

There is no living with cancer--no armistice.  Cancer is either growing or gone.

And the threat of a new assault is always there.

The battle, the struggle for life after cancer is an all or nothing proposition. There is no just living or coexisting with it.

It is a life or death struggle--beat it or die. A person I respected greatly knew she could not win the battle the second time around a few years ago--and decided to cross over into eternity. But she had thought she had already beaten this insidious killer once before.

And so to the heroes in my life--Sue, Mary, and Fran; I shout out to you. I am in awe of how you live your lives every day under the shadow. And to Troy--you so impressed me this past weekend with your spirit and you courage.  I wasn't sure what I was going to find when I arrived at the hospital on Friday--but I found a fighter who is facing the worst that life can toss at him and is still smiling.

Good on ya!