Meg was a beautiful girl, one of those people who just glows. She was always smiling. In high school, she was on the drill team. She was in track. She was active and healthy. She didn't smoke. Her family members didn't smoke. Meg and her husband had their first child early last summer, just weeks before she found out she had stage 4 lung cancer.
Because she was two grades ahead of me, I didn't know Meg well, but I knew her brother. He was in my class, and I've known him since the first grade. I can't begin to imagine what he's going through.
The whole thing is just so terrible. It makes you think. It makes you angry.
No one that young -- that young and that healthy -- should die from cancer.
But Meg is the 3rd person I went to high school with to die from cancer. The others were 22 and 28.
I found out today that another classmate was recently diagnosed. Hers was found early, so she has a 94% chance of beating it. She is 31.
There was cancer in our past, too. A girl in my fifth grade class was diagnosed with cancer. Another girl in the class below me had lymphoma in junior high. They both survived.
My hometown is small. I graduated with 175 people. The other classes were that size too.
Which makes the number of my classmates who have had cancer all the more upsetting.
1 comment:
Oh my goodness. That is so, so terribly sad. It certainly does make you think. And it certainly does make you angry.
Fuck you cancer, indeed.
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