Cancer sucks.

My daughter is six, and she knows too much about cancer.
She knows that people who get it die.
She knows a friend’s grandfather, a schoolmate’s father and now her great uncle got cancer. And died.
How do you explain death – and hope – to a child?
That sometime’s it’s explainable – like Uncle Kenny smoked for decades – and sometimes it’s not?
How that Grandpa smokes too but cancer might not be his curse?
How you can do things to prevent cancer, but that it’s not a given?
How sometimes cancer takes lives and sometimes people survive?
It’s something I’ve struggled with – a lot – the last few weeks, as we went from having a full family at New Year’s to having a hole in our lives. And both my kids struggle too. While their uncle was hours away, he was there.
And now my children hear the word “cancer” and ask questions about death. Ones I’m not quite prepared to discuss.
Or they say prayers to Uncle Kenny. Or tell me things like “When I go to Heaven, I’m going to run up and give Uncle Kenny a big hug.”
Or say in the dark, tucked into bed, that they worry one day we might get cancer too.
I so desperately want to break that cycle. To tell them there are things we can do. Things we can do to take care of ourselves. Things we can do to support others. Things we can do to care for our water, our air, our food, our planet. Things to take action, and not just pray and wait.