When I received the call from my childhood best friend, my emotional levee broke. She called for reassurance knowing that I’d undergone a needle biopsy of my own. “Think positively. They are probably just ruling out Cancer.” With cracky voice, she agreed and assured me she would call back tomorrow with the results. No call. I knew.
This is the part where I wish I could claim valor, strength, courage. I wish I could tell the story of a friend who zoomed down to Cinci right after finding out my best friend had breast cancer. Tell you all that I was there at her double masectomy and after with support. Instead, I failed her and me.
Breast cancer looms large in my psyche stalking like the grim reaper patiently waiting. Unlike Heather, I got good news a clean bill of health from my doctor after biopsy analysis. So I am safe for now. Having a maternal grandmother (my namesake) fight and lose to cancer before I got to meet her will leave a mark. This is me trying to justify why I cowered when Heather got her news.
Now she is doing very well and I am coming to terms with my not being a good friend then in the face of my own fears. In her honor and my grandmother’s, I have started Project Pink Photos. Just me right now. Hopefully others in 2010. What I can do for people, like Heather, is take family photographs at no charge. This year I have selected a handful of individuals affected with breast cancer and offered them my photography service. This way I am doing something for them and doing something to overcome my own inner fear.
More from Heather’s family gallery here.
Later this year, I will compile a gallery of these special images and share with you all inviting you to do the same in your neck of the woods if you choose. You will hear more from me about Project Pink Photo in the spring of 2010. Till then, I hope you all stay healthy and wrestle your own fears back to size.
Leigh