Their eviction date was January 31st, 2010. She had just finished her first round of chemo treatments and was resting at home after her breast surgery when her husband died of a massive heart attack on January 10th.

We are now in the process of trying to help her find affordable housing for herself and the children. She has no other family that can help out. The neighbors have been great watching the children and picking things up at the store. Eviction has now been pushed back to the end of February but the prospects of finding housing look pretty grim. Please keep her and her family in your prayers.

I know this photograph is hard to look at, but cancer isn’t for sissies.

This photo was taken some years back after my youngest sister’s mastectomy following her diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer, a more rare and more deadly form of breast cancer. What I love about the photo is what it tells us about HER.  

Always a free-spirited sort, the crystal pendant was a symbol of her new-age leanings. The dog tags, which belonged to our deceased uncle, an air force chaplain, symbolized her “foxhole conversion.” Facing possible death, she wasn’t quite sure where the truth lay as far as an afterlife went, but wasn’t taking any chances.

The crystal heart was her attempt to feminize what was left of her body, having survived the ravages of surgery, chemo and radiation. Most people don’t ever get to see what a chest looks like after a mastectomy, which is why I shot this photo. Well-meaning, they say, “just be grateful you’re alive …” and will not allow the survivor to grieve the loss of their breast.  Yet, when people look at this photo, they recoil with horror and when I ask them what they are looking at, will say, “It’s a man’s chest, who has had surgery or an injury…”  Think how that makes a young woman feel, she has to look at it every day and be reminded of what she used to look like before the doctors hacked, slashed and burned.  

One of the many lessons I learned from my warrior-sister’s cancer journey was to shut up and just listen and to recognize that they will go through all the stages of grief over this loss, and on their “angry” days, they should be allowed to feel anger without someone minimizing their feelings by saying, “just be grateful you are alive.”  Maybe they would understand the anger a bit more, if they could look at this photo.

A cancer survivor CAN be grateful and angry at the same time.  Allow them that if that is what they need.

Really.

Sue Cassidy, Huntington Beach

Photographer, Sue Cassidy