The lady in the headscarf

HAVE you ever been in the right place at the right time? This week, I was. It was a non-entity of a day, of normal routines, chores and expectations when I happened upon a woman I did not know. She was looking for directions. She had a scarf on her head and a lost look on her face.

I pointed to where she should be going, and she thanked me. But then she paused. She looked at me and as natural as can be, she said she had breast cancer, that she was diagnosed in September and that she was facing her third chemo cycle. The unknown awaited her. Tears came to the surface. She was lost on so many levels.

She got embarrassed and apologised. She laughed off the moisture in her eyes and made to go.

I touched her hand to stay, then I told her that this week nine years ago I too was lost, that I too had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and, like her, the unknown awaited me.

Her tears fell now, but relief seemed to come over her as she said, “but you look so well”, and I was happy to tell her that I was well, very well.

She told me she found the last chemo tough, that she had been down in herself for the past two weeks, that she had lost her hair, her eyebrows and that her nails were broken. It’s a cruel illness, breast cancer and its treatment, stripping us women of all the things that we feel make us beautiful: our manes, our boobs, our adornments, our femininity.

When I went to assure her that the body rallies and restores and that these things will come back, she said something that brought tear to my eyes.

She said she did not mourn what she had lost. She said she had her hair when she needed to have hair, she had eyebrows when eyebrows mattered, and she had breasts when it was important to have breasts.

All she wanted now was life. Life.

Facing her, my own life flashed before me, my life of the past nine years. I thought about the moments I have touched and the people I am with. I thought about the sun on my face, the rain on my skin and the snow in my boots.

I thought about the belly laughs I have known and the tears I have shed, the ordinariness of breathing and getting out of bed.

We looked at each other, not knowing one another but knowing everything. And as the lady in the headscarf made to leave me, sure now of her direction, she leaned in and whispered “I just want to grow old”. I left that right place at the right time in the middle of an ordinary week. And I cried. For a lady I didn’t expect to meet; for me, who is grateful to be here; and for all facing, surviving and living with cancer.