Blog Post #6

CURSES

I got a call from a friend the other day. “I have cancer, “he said.

“Fuck,” I said, the word erupting from somewhere deep in my belly giving me no chance of
stopping it from exiting my mouth.

Fuck. Is that what you’re supposed to say when someone tells you he has cancer?

When I told friends and family about my daughter Nadia’s cancer diagnosis, I got all kinds
of responses. I heard the dreadful news, a friend wrote. I’ll keep her in my prayers, vowed a
range of people, mostly my husband’s relatives who sent us mass cards which I tried my best to
appreciate because of the love behind them, but which only seemed to me, a Jew, as funereal.
She’ll be fine, I know it. You’ll get through it; Nadia’s tough and you’re a great mother. This
will make your family so much stronger.

Only my husband said fuck, or gave some similar verbal outburst, and it made me angry. It
made him seem so pessimistic, as if he was ready to give in before the fight. If he was swearing,
how could he soothe me or give me hope? But this was the worst thing that ever happened to us.
It seems almost ludicrous not to curse.

So curse I did when my friend delivered his news. Maybe it’s easier to fall back on such raw
forms of expression when there is no need to protect yourself from your own emotions. But
could I have made it seem worse for my friend, as if I was saying fuck not because he has cancer
but because of the real reason we curse the disease—it kills? I can’t really say. We ended up
having a long conversation, my initial response now tempered by listening and empathy and by
following his mood, which naturally tended toward humor and even irreverence.

So maybe saying fuck was appropriate. Maybe I knew all along that it would be, and that
I’d know not to say it when it is a mother telling me about her child. But even I don’t know
what the right words would be, by that I mean the very first words. Oh no. I’m so sorry. How
horrible. These phrases are also quick injections of shared grief and sadness, although the
portion carried by the parents is so much greater. The second and third sets of words are simpler.
How are you doing? What have the doctors told you? How did you find out? Questions are
easier, less like improvising.

Maybe you need that initial shot of pure emotion, like a kick to a door, to clear the barriers to
future conversation. Or maybe it’s just that anything is better than silence so you might as well
speak from the belly rather than the mind.