ENCORE #157! – When There’s Nothing To Talk About Is There Nothing To Talk About?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in October 2017…

Like the title says…I don’t know what to say right now, so I’m going to direct you to a post by a very old friend of mine. I met Bruce Bethke before my wife and I married. I was looking for a science fiction writers group to join and stumbled across a notecard at UNCLE HUGO’S SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE (http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/index.shtml).

Bruce, Phillip C. Jennings, and someone I cannot for the life of me remember, started meeting to share writing and talk about the field. Then we all sort of drifted apart. Bruce and I didn’t talk much (it was at the advent of the Internet, so contact we via paper or face-t0-face). At a MinniCon, I heard him speak, re-introduced myself, and as it was now the Age of the Internet, we renewed our friendship. Older and wiser, we found we had more things in common.

In August of 2010, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. In March of 2011, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. We became actual friends (not me and breast cancer, me and Bruce…)

He’s an award-winning science fiction author; he’s a man who has survived some very difficult life experiences, and now he’s the executive editor of an on-line speculative fiction magazine.

Recently, he shared about their most recent experience with breast cancer. I’ll leave you to ruminate with him as he looks at jackalopes and cancer: http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/search?q=breast+cancer

At any rate, you’ll find as I did, that breast cancer and friendships, while undoubtedly a strange pair, can make for curiously strong bonds.

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg