In Shadow and LightLooking for the Gifts of Cancer

by Connie Z. Reider

The photographs and words exhibited here are the wisdom I have learned over the past six years walking down the path called CANCER. After being diagnosed with breast cancer and living through the excruciating fear which followed, I realized that there were also positive effects from the dreaded disease… profound shifts in the way I was living my life. As a professional photographer, I used my camera to express the changes I was experiencing; as a journal writer, I used my words to lay down the thoughts passing through my head and the emotions penetrating my heart. My hope is that these images and words will help and comfort you.

November, 1995

Malignant… the words left me reeling…

Over and over, I asked the question. I was forty-eight, had no family history, exercised 6 our of 7 days a week,

ate nutritiously, did not smoke.So, why me ?

Why me?

My mastectomy took place during the blizzard of ’96, the great snowstorm that hit the East Coast in January. The winter white out mirrored my own frozen condition. First I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried.

Before my diagnosis, I spent so much time and energy analyzing the past and planning for the future. Now I understand whatever control I have over my life comes from focusing on how I perceive the world around me.

Like most of us when we are suffering,I was trying to make sense out of the hard part of living. Except cancer does not make sense.

What would it be like to live with physical deformity?Would I ever be sexually appealing again?How excruciating would my next mammogram be?And, what if the cancer returned?

As time passed, I probed deeper. Was there a hidden purpose in this ordeal? Could I wrench meaning out of this?

Still I went ontrying, turning these questions over and over in my mind.One day, it dawned on me… Ah-hah! There were never going to be any answers.

I could count on a good outcome. What I have learned is that the connection between cause and effect is not so certain.

I used to think that I could control my life. By always doing it right: being a good mother, good wife, good daughter, good photographer…

As Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan put it, “Expecting bad things not to happen to you just because you are good, is like expecting the bull not to charge just because you are a vegetarian.”

With my pain has come growth and then joy. My struggles have become my blessings, and my camera, the means to touch and explore them all.

Being a photographer, I have always been privileged to bend the boundaries of real time and space. But after my diagnosis, I found myself especially drawn to images that spoke to what it was like to live with cancer: ordinary moments in time… reminding me to savor the very instant.

Forests represent fear and losing my way.

Water gleams in its reflective, healing power.

Pathways lead to the unknown. Embraces envelope the human

connection.

Now I listen to the birds singing as I sip my morning tea and look out at the trees. And trust me, it does not feel trite.

It is five years after diagnosis. The five year marker does not give the security I expected.

As the anniversary of each trauma passes, depression, not triumph, creeps into my life. I am remembering so much of what I experienced, only this time the shock is no longer here to numb me. I feel frightened of just about everything. My creativity has evaporated, my positive outlook has hibernated.

Where are my gifts?

November 2000

As the weeks of depression slowly pass by, I realize that my fear and my vulnerability are at the heart of my gifts. The hovering of my mortality helps me stay vigilant about the beauty of right now.

The voice that reminds me

I am susceptible to a recurrence also reminds me that I am alive in a special place filled with beauty.

Whatever happens, an ordinary day is filled with countless blessings.

No matter how crazy the day has been, I remind myself of what is important to me… family, friends, connecting with other human beings.

Each morning, as I dress, my reconstructed breast is a reminder: the cancer will always be in my life. The fear of its return will never go away. It is this fear that is a gift.This fear reminds me,I am going to die…And so I live now…

If death is the only certainty,

I have learned I had better live this very moment, without the old hesitations that used to hold me back.

Each day takes on more meaning. I open up, and I let go. I don’t obsess or think the worst, or get cerebral and

try to control things in my head.

Truly aware of each ordinary moment in each extraordinary day… the aroma of coffee wafting through the house, my dogs leaping with energy to go for their morning walk, the sun spreading its golden glow across the trees, and the wind brushing my face with life’s energy…

Gratitude to be alive…

Fully alive…

For however much longer that happens to be.

Since I began my journey with cancer, I have lost my beloved father to prostate cancer, my faithful black Lab to bone cancer, my dearest friend’s husband, as well as my rabbi, both to brain cancer, and my cousin to esophageal cancer. I watched their bodies wither and die, though their spirits never succumbed to the invader.

They left me with a legacy of love and strength, and they made me promise live my life to its fullest.

It’s a promise I do my best to keep.

And so…For me at least, cancer has been necessary to make me appreciate and enjoy life… the way the irritant of sand is needed to make a pearl… which may, finally, be an answer to the question,

“Why me?”