A Tragedy Of Epic Proportion

                                                       

The news this morning brought another sad story of a young woman who succumbed to Ovarian Cancer.  It was newsworthy because the victim happened to be the lovely daughter of actor Pierce Brosnan.  Mr. Brosnan's tragedy of losing a daughter is made more forlorn since Pierce's first wife, the mother of the now deceased daughter, had also died from Ovarian cancer at a tragically young age.  And, sadly, there are millions of women who will die from this scourge.

I can't think of anything that saddens me more than reading of another brutal death of a woman by Ovarian or Breast Cancer.  It sickens me beyond reason.  When I see lovely young women like Angela Jolie forced to make the decision to mutilate herself in order to give her a chance to live into her golden years I am heart broken.  Angela Jolie (nee "pretty angel") carries the same cancer gene that killed her mother in the bloom of youth and I can think of nothing more cruel.

I believe that what saddens and angers us about this is that women hold such a special place in our hearts, in our minds, and in our society as a whole.  These victims are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters and our wives.  From birth, they are our caretakers, our nurturers and always our last best hope for unconditional love in a world that can be cruel indeed.  They are the center of our universe and, when they leave us, they leave us drifting in twin states of confusion and the most extreme sense of loss one can experience.

This cruel scourge shows no mercy.  When the Angela Jolie radical mastectomy was reported I read other stories of equal concern.  Most notable was the story of five sisters, all carrying the dreaded death gene. Sisters who had all undergone mastectomies to extend their lives.  They spoke of heartbreaking losses of their mothers and grandmothers and aunts, all who succumbed to this nasty and frightening disease.

And so, when I read of Pierce Brosnan's daughter passing I couldn't help but mourn his loss; I still remember his bravery and dignity as he offered love and support to his pretty young wife a few years ago.  And now, thanks to a nasty, cruel, unyielding cancer gene, he must now bury a child, the last vestige of a love ended far too soon.

Surely God will guide the hands of our disease researchers.  While random cases of cancer are tragic enough, it is simply not fair to embed a death sentence in a newborn little girl.  May our creator serve as "muse", creating in the brilliance of a medical researcher, the spark that will show us how to destroy this embedded savagery that takes our dearest hearts, and the centers of our universe.