When I was working for the American Cancer Society, one of my major initiatives was to start a Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. The success of this walk was a no-brainer. People, especially women, were absolutely rabid in their desire to deck out with a pink wig, boa and whatever else they could find and march up and down the beach in a public celebration of survivorship and common hatred of the disease that could and had affected many of them.
I look back at how I used to drag my mom out to every kick-off, cocktail party and walk and force upon her pink tiaras, “survivor” t-shirts and washable pink tattoos. I think I even had her put a pink hair extension in her short chemo ravaged hair. As the shy one in the family, I never even stopped to notice how reluctant she was to brandish her survivorship around like all the other women who were just so proud to have survived.
To me, it was just something you did. Donning anything pink equaled fighting breast cancer. If you didn’t, did you really mean it? Looking back, I’m starting to relate to Kramer just a teensy bit: AIDS Walk Episode. In a way, it was even a benefit to me professionally. The fact that my mom was fighting cancer somehow legitimized my presence as a leader in the organization.
It took a few weeks after we lost our mom before my sister and I could get it together to start cleaning out her closet. We worked pretty quickly, sharing a few stories and tears here and there as we divided up “keep”, “Goodwill” and “Trash”. It took only a few minutes before we came upon the first one…the first pink ribbon. It was an innocuous pair of socks with a cute little pink ribbon embroidered on them. Excuse my French, but for the accuracy of this story, I have to tell you exactly what was said next…”Fuck the pink ribbon”. What the hell had that pink ribbon ever done for us? What had it ever done for Mom? The pair of socks was launched out of the closet and landed squarely in the Goodwill pile.
Next? A scarf adorned with artistic pink ribbons. The tag was still on it. Surely someone, meaning all the best, had seen the scarf and thought of mom and lovingly given it to her. Mom tucked it away never to be touched again….until it took flight out of the closet with our new refrain “fuck the pink ribbon”.
Then the shirts…a stack of Relay For Life, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, Avon Walk, Komen Race for the Cure, etc. etc. shirts adorned with the word “survivor” across the back. Some events mom hadn’t even participated in but that people had given her. They flew well.
Pins, ribbons, hoodies…we could have started a boutique of all the lightly or never worn items. With each item, our sadness turned to anger. We found something to hate almost as much as the actual cancer itself…that stupid pink ribbon that never did anything for our mom but was somehow everywhere we looked.
