Cancer Made the People Come Back

They emerged from long silences and came from all times and many different places. They drew as near as possible through words and cards, and so many flowers—so many my small house could not even hold them all. They emerged through what seemed like unending Grub Hub gift cards; through prayers, phone calls, and through apps like Marco Polo, WhatsApp, and Voxer. They reminded me who I am, who I had always been.

Cancer made the people from my past come back—friends I had made in the five states I had lived chunks of my life in. They offered their knowledge, physical and emotional support, checked in on me, and showed that they remembered me, and listened to (or read) my social media updates or my blog. They heard me, and they responded with love in whatever language they could. I felt seen and held. I felt like I knew what my funeral might be like, and who might show up. I felt like my house looked like a funeral hall. It was beautiful, and even though I feared for my life, it made me laugh.

In my faith, I am compelled to read the Bible for encouragement, strength, and for hope. And as I experienced this heart-warming return of love from my past, I was reminded of this Bible verse in Acts 17:26 I am often drawn to, which says, “God made from One blood every nation of man,” and that God “has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.” This verse goes on to say that this is how we can find God: in the people we meet and live parts of our lives near, or even those who simply exist at the same time as us. This verse confirms my natural inclination to believe that our times, places, and people were chosen all at once and forever, not necessarily for a reason, but perhaps with a reason in mind. I believe in this mysterious phenomenon and see the power behind this evidenced in the people I have come in contact with so far in my 37 years of life. The truth is these folks, in my biased opinion, are the best humans existing in the same timeframe as me. It’s a wild concept, and yet I feel it is affirmed over and over again in the life-giving friendships that motivate me to persevere. I have experienced such friendships in various circumstances. And cancer made them all come back.

Through my stage 2b triple-negative breast cancer diagnosis at the age of 34, during the global pandemic, while parenting a two-yearold son and a six-year-old daughter, enduring 16 chemotherapy infusions, and undergoing my bilateral mastectomy surgery, friends I had made who were scattered across the country and the world held my tired head up. They enabled me to see hope again, preventing the walls I felt closing in around me from further encroaching.

We met on bicycles, in stale church conference rooms, at the Christian store in the town mall, at Bible boot camp in the summer as teenagers, and at a small church in Franklin, Tennessee. This church was situated in a modern-decorated warehouse with old windows hanging from wooden pillars, where beautiful local musicians lead the worship music. We met in lecture halls at the California Baptist University Cafeteria at our assigned seats in the second grade; our name plates divinely appointed. We met through my tears as I walked in nervous to begin volunteering with people coming to Seattle as refugees and asylees. We met when I heard a child yelling complaints in my North Carolina neighborhood, and suddenly, I realized there was a new stay-at-home mom on the block that I needed to hang out with. We met when I awkwardly knocked on their door, asking if they were having a baby soon, and when I asked where the bathroom was at our church in the middle school building. Our paths crossed through lonely tears at the small church near the desert mountain, where I found myself begging someone to be my friend. We met as counselors at summer camp when we were 20-year-old dreamers, in the tiny theater room in Seattle we affectionally called our church, and even when it fell apart, we didn’t. We met because our boyfriends were friends from work or small group. Visits from Georgia in the springtime would happen, where getting stuck in a Seattle rainstorm would bind us together for a lifetime. And in North Carolina, where my daughter screamed at theirs about it being her turn at the park we could walk to from our homes. We became dearly connected, wholly intertwined, more like family than friends. Always inclined to ensure each other had enough mental capacity, hope, money, and resources to get by, to feel less alone, and even to flourish.

My friends all showed up in a thousand ways when I called, texted, Voxer’ed or Marco Polo’d them, or when their late night social media scrolling revealed my diagnosis to them. I swam in the kind waters of Grub Hub gift cards and bouquet upon bouquet of flowers, soaps, face masks, heating pads, journals, books, socks, blankets, letters, text and Facebook messages, and anti-nausea meds. My heart filled with the memory of the life we all shared in our closest times. These friends reminded me who I was, but they also revealed who they were yet again: the world’s best humans—my friends, showing up in my deepest pain, knowing there’s no fix, but just being present. And there was no fix, of course, but their presence mended me. Their letters, phone calls—even after five or 12 years of not talking due to life— their willingness to give abundantly, and their fervent, sometimes active prayers, humbled and rebuilt me, pulling me out of the black hole of despair my diagnosis had sucked me into.

Amidst all of this, while I was in active treatment and before the COVID vaccine came out, my pastor, who is a friend, came to pray with me outside my house one cold morning. We both paced around with our hands in our pockets to keep warm, and he kept saying he knew this experience with cancer must be so hard, and asked how my husband and I were. Honestly, at the time—even in this chaos—despite this pain, this unknown young diagnosis, I told him we were actually doing fine because we felt stable. We felt unified, like we had prayed and worked toward in our 10 years of marriage at that time. It was because we felt held by our friends.

We felt held because, even before cancer, the people whom God had determined would exist at the same time as me—even from across our time together and the miles between us—came back into my heart and life. The joy I felt from this is unexplainable. The people that I know are beautiful. My friends are beautiful. The God I believe in is kind. The amount of suffering in this world is vast and unmeasurable. Though I already knew, I can now say without a doubt in my mind that we need one another to move through all the muck of life. We need one another to remind us who we are, to help us come back to ourselves; to stay grounded; to survive. My people came back, and I know that’s not everyone’s story. I feel unending gratitude, and I aspire to this type of return should any of them ever need it, should any of you ever need it.

This article was featured in the March 2024 Friendships issue of Elephants and Tea Magazine! Click here to read our magazine issues.