There are 52 blank pages following my grandma’s last journal entry. 

Those blank pages are something that I just can’t seem to stop thinking about. Ever since I came across the old cardboard box buried in the closet of her Berkshire home, filled with pictures, newspaper clippings, and a collection of journals dating back to Christmas 1998. 

Everything was in cursive. I got the sense while I was reading that I was translating some sacred lost language. Some parts are easier to discern than others – the names of my father and his siblings, my own name, and my cousins’. 

These parts of her writing align with what I know about my grandma. She was an incredibly caring person, and she often wrote more about her family than herself. Some entries were just recipes, including her special iced tea, which she brewed in a jar under the sun on the back deck every summer. 

Some were things I didn’t pay attention to when I was a kid. My grandma, a retired nurse, was a passionate member of the Lanesborough Board of Health, and she wrote often about vaccine clinics, state-subsidized insurance plans, and more. 

I have always considered myself incredibly lucky to have a “woke” grandma. While I probably knew that she was passionate about these things, the determination with which she pursued them was new to me.

On one day in 2006, she recorded calls to eight different state agencies regarding the cleanup of some construction sites around her small town. “Called State Ethics Committee – they will call me back,” she wrote. “Got the impression it was none of my business.” 

Besides the government happenings, the longest entries came around what I believe to be the two hardest periods  in my grandma’s life. The first was in July 2007, when her eldest daughter died after a long and difficult battle with breast cancer. 

Although the entries get more sporadic in that time of grief, she did eventually begin reporting again on the day’s weather and various phone calls with family. She started a book club and took detailed notes on her favorites (she was a big fan of Anne Lamott). She joined the planning committee for the Onota Lake Relay for Life and sought sponsorships from local businesses. 

In May of 2011, she began recording some medical problems. “7 p.m.–severe dizziness–nausea,” she wrote. At the end of that month, she was diagnosed with stage three pancreatic cancer. 

She never specifically mentions her illness, but her entries get longer. They’re more reflective. I got the sense that she knew, whether from her experience as a nurse or from the doctors she saw, that the diagnosis was not good. And that although she had lived a long life, she had more to do. 

“I always wanted to be a real person,” she wrote. “But it never worked out.” 

Two days after I sat at the dining room table of my grandparents’ old house reading my grandma’s last entries, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing the national budget, including billions of dollars allotted to the National Health Institute. 

The NIH is the highest contributor to cancer research in the U.S. When I heard about the freeze, I thought about my outspoken grandma. I could imagine her, picking up the landline and trying to make a direct call to the White House. 

I’m not saying that any funding for cancer research could have saved my grandma’s life in 2011. 

Her battle with the disease was short and decidedly unbalanced. But the NIH has helped fund several projects since that have increased the medical community’s ability to detect cancer early and treat it more effectively.

The American Association for Cancer Research came out with this study in July, in which they surveyed researchers who study cancer disparities — why people in rural communities are 18% more likely to die from cancer, or why Black women are 35% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. 

In that study, they found that federal policy changes to cancer research have affected 93% of researchers in the field. Some have been unable to apply for funding, some suffered irreparable research setbacks when money was frozen, and patients in clinical trials were unable to receive their treatment. Of those surveyed, 59% said funding that was lost or interrupted came from the NIH. 

The 52 blank pages at the end of her last notebook represent everything that she lost to cancer. 

There are no entries about my cousins’ weddings, or the births of her great-grandchildren. 

There are 52 fewer days of beautiful weather, trips to the Lee Outlets, and berating phone calls to state officials. 

Cancer research saves lives.

It means that one day, someone with my grandma’s disease might get better.

In her last entry, dated two months before her death, my grandma said nothing instantly remarkable. 

It’s a short entry, just two lines without a glimmer of finality. 

“No garden–rain,” she wrote. “Talked with Kate re: new job offer. Good day.” 

The post Hickey: Yes, I read my grandma’s diary appeared first on Itemlive.

Source link

24World Media does not take any responsibility of the information you see on this page. The content this page contains is from independent third-party content provider. If you have any concerns regarding the content, please free to write us here: contact@24worldmedia.com