This is the one that might wind some folks up. That is not intended. And remember, you can stop reading at any time. I do not invite controversy; I simply play out where my head is.

Words matter.

Whitecross friends will have heard me say it in dozens of assemblies and hundreds of times out of them. I get a little excited about words, their power, their subtlety, their magic- and even as I type, I know what sort of a geek I must sound like.

But it’s true. I think that no major event in human history- great and terrible- ever happened without some great and terrible words being spoken:

‘Fourscore and seven years ago’
‘We will fight them on the beaches...’
‘Let there be light.’
‘I have a dream today.’
‘I love you.’
‘I don’t love you.’
'I don't know how I could have married someone like you.'
‘It’s cancer.’

Pretty potent, aren’t they?

That’s what has me thinking about the words that I need to choose as I describe what it happening here. For example, am I a cancer ‘sufferer’? Well, at the moment, clearly not. Apart from the pain in my chest and some tiredness, I am not suffering. In fact, some of you might read all this and wonder if I’m ill at all. It sounds rather chipper just now. WILL I suffer? of that I have no doubt. But that will be from the chemotherapy, unless I am much mistaken. It is not the cancer that will make me suffer in the coming weeks, but the cure. Later? Who knows? So will I be called a ‘chemo sufferer’? Remains to be seen.

It’s the word ‘survivor’ that I am really dubious about, however.

I intend to live. Let me make that clear before I start this part of the thread. I have no intention of dying, not now at least. I have huge plans for the future- and not just the next year, but the next thirty or so. They start with getting my grading done, and then progress through putting Annie through university and seeing her settled. Next, they move on to heading for Malaysia and Africa and Singapore in a series of job changes that will eventually see me start my own school and run things the way I jolly well like, thank you very much. The plans wrap up on Snider Mountain back in New Brunswick, where I have a plot of land and shall build a single story cabin with a good kitchen and a lovely porch, screened in against mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds and tenacious black flies. There, I shall end my days on my rocking chair, wearing purple, flanked by my two dogs, Virgil (the ugliest lurcher I can find) and Mephistopheles, (a yappy little terrier) and holding a shot gun in my lap so that I can fire off buckshot at the varmints that invade my vegetable patch. I shall raise goats for the cheese, and have a tired old mule called Esme, so I can shout ‘Whoa, Esme!’ and laugh at myself every time I do so for the clever word play.

You can see that I have given this much thought.

So, no, I have no plans to pop my clogs just yet. So what is my issue with the word ‘survivor’, then? It’s hard to pin down, exactly, but I know that I have one. It might be because I’m not actually feeling ill; I haven’t engaged in any sort of a battle yet. Perhaps once I am on the other side of this, I will feel like I want to use the tag. Not now, though. I don’t like the thought.

I certainly do not want to imply that I think ANYthing derogatory at all about other people calling themselves survivors, no. Not for a moment. They are certainly entitled to use whatever words they want, and I have immense respect for them. I have already learned, you see, that this is an intensely personal experience. Their cancers were theirs; this cancer is MINE. It belongs to no one else, however similar it might seem to that experienced by others. Whatever your aunts or cousins or sisters or mothers-in-law or YOU might have had happen, it was not what I have happening now. This is like my fingerprint: I’m the only one with THIS,  and my opinions and feelings- and the words I choose to use- will be as unique. Other people can use the words they want. I do not sneer at them, not ever.

I just don’t feel like I want to grant this thing in me any respect- or certainly not the respect that is implied by the word ‘survive’. I do not want to give any ground or credence or credibility to it. I want to treat it like something paltry and insignificant, like a minor annoyance, like an irritating sniffle or a bit of grit under my nail. I don’t want it to be as powerful as a tidal wave or an earthquake or fire- those are the things people ought to survive, not an illness that SO many have experienced. Why is this thing still killing people? Why does it leave so many quaking and frightened? How dare it?

Yes, I realise that it is serious. I know. Again, I do not belittle anyone else’s experience with it. But what I call it- and what I call myself as I endure these next few months- that matters. My definition of it will define how I respond to it, how much of a basket case I become. I know that it is not paltry or insignificant or annoying. I am saying what I want it to be, not what it is. But don’t try to convince me to say it is something that I must ‘survive’.  Because then I might stop laughing at it, and that would be bad.

How do you know I am afraid? I laugh. I will find the most inappropriate things to mock and fleer and scoff at, and I will hopefully drag everybody along on the joke with me. I come from a long line of smart asses, several generations of whom spend every family reunion trying to get the last word, and playing with words and sneers and snide comments to hide a multitude of insecurities and hurt feelings. This is my fall back. This is how I want to treat cancer. Perhaps rather than survive it, I just want to be the only one still talking when my conversation with it is over.
I want to get the last word.