Delia Adamson and uncle Nathan Gaddy pose for a photo during their family Thanksgiving lunch on Nov. 23. Adamson has been attending this family event since she was young. “I love family events,” Adamson said. “You get to see the family you don’t everyday and that’s a special thing.” Photo courtesy of Delia Adamson
By DELIA ADAMSON – Writing Coach
The cancer dances around his body. It begins with a slow embrace of the colon, intertwining itself with his anatomy, becoming one. But the disease is a selfish partner, always wanting more to dance with. It begins to seduce the liver and softly cradle the lungs.
Every day, is painful. Every day, the clock ticks even faster.
For my entire life, I have viewed cancer as this distant figure. I knew it existed, but I never thought it could hurt me. I never thought it could come into my life.
It did.
I found out that my uncle was diagnosed with Stage-4 colon cancer at the end of my sophomore year. Stage-4. I didn’t know much about cancer, but I knew that Stage-4 was bad.
I was confused almost immediately.
How could you not know you have colon cancer?
As it turned out, he had known something was wrong, but never told anyone.
For years, he suffered in silence.
This broke me because, in my mind, maybe if he had said something earlier it wouldn’t have gotten this far, this bad. There would have been something that could have been done.
I sat in a chair in the corner of his hospital room, watching the steady flow of visitors coming in and out. Every time someone new entered, he would sit up straight in the bed with a smile on his face and once they left, he would sink slowly back into the bed.
He was too stubborn to show anyone how he truly felt.
I don’t know how I feel. But everytime I talk about it, I cry. Everytime I think about it, I cry.
Even as I write, I cry.
And my mother tells me to talk to him about it and she says that he is the only one who can really tell you what is happening, but how do you talk to your dying uncle about dying?
He’s dying. And there is nothing I can do about it.
Maybe it’s the fact that his pills aren’t working.
Maybe it’s the fact that my 16-year-old cousin may have to grow up without his father.
Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t accept that.
But maybe I am going to have to.
