Cancer victims not to be defined by disease

He knows what the doctor is about to say, cancer.
He has known ever since that terrible day in the bathroom, when he shut the door.
He never shuts the door.
After 32 years of marriage you don’t have to shut the bathroom door anymore.
But he did. That was the first sign that something was wrong.
And now as he hears the six-letter word slip through the doctors’ mouth, he feels his wife’s hand squeeze tighter. He knows she is starting to cry, but he doesn’t.
It is not because he is trying to be strong for her.
It is not because the truth of those words hasn’t hit him yet.
It is because his mind is on the small stack of wood at home. He needs to cut more as soon as he gets back since the temperature is dropping, and winter is right around the corner.
He gets home to a caravan of family members. This was the first time that they had all been there for a while. Everyone is silent for too long. He doesn’t like that. He yells for requests for dinner. No one speaks up. He says heck with it, he is making what he wants, buckwheat pancakes.
He gets out all the ingredients and starts humming his old western theme songs. It is too quiet, he hates that. He yells for his daughter to tell him about her vacation she just got back from. He wanted to see pictures of the beach and sunsets and the stories behind them. He wanted the house to be filled with noise.
He wanted normal.
A family was gathered in that small house prepared for crying, hugging and awkward silences, but instead he gave them buckwheat pancakes and a laughing living room.
He knows he is going to be okay no matter what the next doctor says. That confidence is in every swing of the axe, every stir of the recipe, every laugh in the living room.
The man has been through horse kicks, seizures, open-heart surgery and 32 years with the same crazy woman.
If anyone thinks cancer is going to change the man he is, they are mistaken.
This is a story of a man, not a disease. A story of one person going through something that so many of us can relate to: cancer.
It’s the Ryan Seacrest of all diseases, the buzzword of our generation.
Talk to anyone and they will tell you a personal experience that they have had with the disease.
This is my personal story of my grandpap. I feel we can all relate to this story, and I believe that these people going through this life-changing, six-letter word cannot receive enough credit. I thank you warriors who hear the news and fight for laughter in the living room, buckwheat pancakes in the middle of the night; for a life still worth living. They are all more than that six-letter word.
This is a story of a man, not a disease.