(Image: Bob Knorpp)
What would you do if your daughter had cancer?
Once you get past the shock and the horror and the sadness, most of us would want our child to know exactly how much we loved her. But not everyone is good with words — or feelings, for that matter. So if you fall into that bucket, what would you do? How would you say it?
My friend, Anita, had cancer. Thankfully it’s been in remission for some time, but she went through most everything that cancer means in this day and age. She had chemotherapy. She had surgery. She lost all her hair. She got sick. She felt fear. But Anita is one of the toughest ladies I know. And with the help of her family and her doctors, she beat the disease.
Yet when she told me this story some years ago as I was first getting to know her, she didn’t dwell on all the bad stuff. She instead talked about so many of the positive moments that had meant the most to her. And she talked mostly about the remodeling of her house with the help of her dad.
Anita’s dad was an immigrant to Canada and blue collar to the core. What he knew was construction — working with his hands and expressing himself in his work. What he didn’t know was communicating feeling with words.
Anita told me about how all through her treatments, she could see the silent helplessness in her dad. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could say. He was a big and strong man. But all his strength could not take away this disease from his daughter.
When the disease was gone, though. Anita began making some very life-affirming choices. One of them was the remodeling of her home.
And this was a language her dad could speak.
She rolled her eyes a bit as she related how her dad took over the project. Nothing was good enough. Everything had to be perfect. Every detail had to be covered and every nuance beautiful. It drove her absolutely crazy. But her smile said it all. And I understood as only a dad could. Her dad had been silenced by her cancer. His love for his daughter was voiceless in its wake. But remodeling her home said everything he wanted to say. And he said it with everything that he had.
Sometimes there are no words for love. Sometimes there is only a hammer and a nail and a light in your eye. And even cancer can’t silence an expression of love this pure.
Anita is currently raising money for cancer research. Please click here, read her appeal and consider making a donation to help find a cure.
Robert Knorpp is host of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast at thebeancast.com and is President of The Cool Beans Group, a marketing strategy consultancy based in New York City. He likes laughing even more than breathing. You can follow the madness on Twitter at twitter.com/BobKnorpp.
