Excuse Me, Ma'am

[Chuck Stromme]

Excuse Me, Ma'am

by Chuck Stromme

“Not bad for an old lady” she thinks, smiling, toweling off the sweat. It's hot in her exercise club.

It's been a hard year. After a good start – a two week trip overseas, a lovely early spring, a flowering garden – she had found that lump. That damn lump. Spring flowers gave way to a lumpectomy, gardening to chemo, harvest to radiation. Now it's winter again.

She's always been secretly proud of her breasts and her once copper-penny red hair. I mean really, who wouldn't be? Her breast is, well, different now. Her hair fell out. Again. There are new scars. Getting old sucks, she thinks. Well, OK, the hair is coming back at least but the rest of growing old still sucks.

But today, today is one of the good days. She's working out with her buff and younger masseuse friend. Even keeping up a little, sort of. Stretch this, lift that, faster pace, smile through the muscle strain. That kind of good day. She's wearing one of her breast cancer shirts.

“Excuse me, please.” Who... oh, a kid needs to get by. “Oh, sure, no problem.”

A moment later “Excuse me, ma'am.” She looks, sees for the first time. A very small, severely handicapped, twenty-something young woman is shyly trying to get her attention. The woman, not much more than a girl really, has one of those pink tied-ribbon shirts on. She says, in not much more than a whisper, “I had breast cancer, too.” Then, “I lost my breast.”

Life, of course, isn't fair. For each of us who is fortunate, there are those less fortunate. For each of us who are multiply blessed, others are multiply afflicted. We don't see the others very often, mostly because we don't choose to, but sometimes we encounter their reality. Sometimes we have no choice. Sometimes it taps us and says “Excuse me, ma'am.”

No one is ready for that kind of reality. We're not ready for harsh or cruel. We forget they exist while we're basking in good and fulfilled. We don't know what to do when we meet the others.

Only one response will get you through a time like this. Take in the reality. Embrace it and let it affect you. Know it and make it a part of you and only then can you grow from the experience. Don't shun the afflicted. They've had too much of that. Smile, engage them, touch them if it's appropriate. You can acknowledge that you're both fruit of the same tree, then each can go on her way without pity or envy.

Merry Christmas.