GRAF #9 [Object]

 There’s a bracelet I wear. It’s a tennis bracelet made of pink ribbons and pink diamonds between each link. Others just see it as another supporter for the fight against breast cancer. Just by looking you wouldn’t know what real significance that bracelet holds.

I was too young to remember when it happened, but my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was lucky enough to have survived it with a mastectomy. I have a faint memory of being in her room at the hospital after she had woken up from her surgery. I don’t recall any questions or concerns. I just knew she was okay and we had a long car ride home. For a few years after I don’t think I ever really knew that it was cancer she had. I just knew one breast was missing and I never wondered why.

It wasn’t until I was in my early teens that my aunt had gotten cancer for the second time and I realized how scary it was and how lucky my mother was. My aunt’s cancer had been in remission but after years of being cancer free it came back hard. It ended up being in her bones. Unfortunately my last memory of her is sitting outside the room while she was on her last breathe. But I’m grateful to have so many good memories of her.

I used to stay at her house on the weekends. If it was raining we would stay inside and watch t.v. When the sun was out we ran in the fields of long grass around her house. She had a muddy pond all us nieces and nephews were too scared to jump into, yet once we pushed one another in we would swim all day. She would wake me up for scrambled eggs at breakfast before I would be her little helper when mending the horses. Before bed we would rock on her porch swing while she told a story that always ended with laughter. Thankfully not a lot of memories involve her being sick. I recall her having no hair, but by the smile on her face you’d never know she was ill.

After learning my mother had cancer, and that my aunts life was taken by it you can imagine that I have a big fear it will be passed down to me. The bracelet isn’t only a symbol for my support of the survivors and those less fortunate, it’s a symbol of hoping that if my day comes, I will survive too.