Brock Dilworth
Finding Beauty
I came across a woman and her toddler son a couple of months ago while walking through the Riverway, a park that winds alongside the Muddy River near Boston's Longwood Medical Area. The park is quite beautiful, with tall, old oak trees creating a leafy awning 70 feet above the path, providing shade while blocking out the sounds of the city. Ducks and geese in abundant numbers mingle in the river and along its banks.
It was the ducks and geese that had caught the boy's attention. As I approached them on this beautiful, New England autumn day, I could hear the sounds of utter glee coming from the boy, who was overcome with joy at seeing so many ducks and geese in one place. He kept raising his arms, like a referee indicating a touchdown, running furiously in place, and twisting away from his mother's grip to get just one more look at the birds before he was led away. He kept screeching—in an excited, high-pitched voice—the words "Doggie!" and "Moo-Moo!" which, apparently, were the only words he knew for animals. It was the kind of excitement that could only come from a 2-year-old.
And as I got closer still I noticed that this remarkably happy child wore a mask looped around his ears, the type worn by some of the pediatric cancer patients at Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund Clinic, which is just a couple of blocks from the park. As I got even nearer, I noticed his near-bald head under his Red Sox hat. He was so young, so small.
As I passed them I nodded "hello" to the mother. When she turned in my direction, I noticed she'd been crying—silently—and trying to hide it from her boy.
We all know there could have been dozens of reasons for her tears. She could have learned that the child was going to receive more treatment, more chemotherapy, more transplants. Maybe his prognosis had worsened, and his doctors had told her there was little they could do for him. Perhaps, for the first time, she had even allowed a vision to creep into her head of a world without him.
I'd like to think, though, that maybe she was just overcome by this extraordinary child—her own child—who was somehow able to find so much beauty and happiness in a world that had, in return, treated him so unkindly.
Cancer survivors often note that facing adversity has allowed them to see the beauty in life that they may have taken for granted before. Sunsets are that much more vivid, spending time with friends and family that much more precious. For me, in the 15 years and six operations since being diagnosed with medullary carcinoma as an adolescent, the one thing I've learned to appreciate more than anything else is the simple act of continuing to exist—growing older—something that a few times in my past I wasn't convinced I'd do. I take delight in strange things, like watching my hair slowly gray, my memory dull, my jaw line recede. I find humor in not being able to remember where I left my keys, just like my father used to before he permanently affixed them to his belt by a modified telephone cord.
I have reached milestones that I once doubted I would—simple milestones that most assume are common rites. I've gotten married, for instance; I've bought a house; I turned 30 a few years ago; I've built a career. And in a couple of months, my wife will give birth to our first child, a boy.
I can't think of anything more beautiful than that.
