Breast Cancer Diaries: Freda
Photography by Dave Cooper
Text by Jennifer Cooper
“Breast cancer’s effects extend beyond the body into our families, our communities, our world. ”
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, so throughout the month we’re dedicating our platform to the voices of women who have been affected by breast cancer. Women like Stacy, Jennifer, and Donna. After all, creating a space for women’s voices is the whole reason I started this online magazine.
But before we get to Stacy and other women like her, I have to start with Freda.
My grandma Freda was a hell of a woman. She challenged every notion I had of what femininity could be. If John Hughes movies taught me that a girl should be quiet and moody, Freda destroyed that notion with her miniature cutout Chippendale’s dancer and paperback erotica on her living room shelves.
If I was under the impression that bodily humor and pranks were in poor taste, Freda taught me otherwise. My aunt had taken a photo series of my grandma getting off the toilet. It’s the embodiment of her favorite saying, “Shit or get off the pot.” In the pictures, she is seen in a state of half-shock, as if embarrassed by my aunt for catching her at her most human. And yet Freda kept that photo album where she could always reach it. You never knew when visiting company would need a good laugh.
She told me tales of smoking corn silk as a kid and let me stay up late to watch Morton Downey Jr, which even at a young age I knew no one should be watching.
The same aunt who pranked my grandma was the one who spotted the black lump on Freda’s breast. A lump Freda had tried to keep hidden.
It was a while before the cancer spread to her liver and eventually caused her death. In those in-between years, I visited for the summers. I didn’t know the end was coming, so I giggled at the bra with a fake boob casually thrown over her rocking chair. And I giggled some more when she’d yell, “Fetch me my boob! I’m going out!”
The last time I saw Freda, her skin had turned yellow and she didn’t really know who I was. I was part of the only set of grandkids that lived far away, so I could forgive her for not knowing me. I imagine the world begins to shrink when you’re dying. You hold onto the things closest to you. And me? I lived a state away and only saw her once a year.
I’m pissed at the way her story ended. It doesn’t seem fitting for a life so vibrant. Maybe that’s why this month, and this series, means so much to me.
Breast cancer is personal, yes. But its effects extend beyond the body into our families, our communities, our world.
Here’s a sneak preview of our next story…
Jennifer
It’s a warm fall night and I’m outside lighting candles and starting a fire in our little IKEA fire pit. I’ve not entertained much during COVID, which is to say, I haven’t entertained at all. But I’ve invited my neighbor over for a night under the Baltimore-lit sky.
My neighbor Jennifer Blades is an opera singer and voice teacher. In the spring and fall months, her voice flows from her open windows and across the neighborhood, giving us a beautiful, free concert.
She’s also a breast cancer survivor who lost her singing voice after chemo.
Additional editing on this piece was provided by Kathy Cornwell
Additional story development for this series was provided by Cassie Boorn
Here’s a sneak preview of our next story…
Jennifer
It’s a warm fall night and I’m outside lighting candles and starting a fire in our little IKEA fire pit. I’ve not entertained much during COVID, which is to say, I haven’t entertained at all. But I’ve invited my neighbor over for a night under the Baltimore-lit sky.
My neighbor Jennifer Blades is an opera singer and voice teacher. In the spring and fall months, her voice flows from her open windows and across the neighborhood, giving us a beautiful, free concert.
She’s also a breast cancer survivor who lost her singing voice after chemo.
Additional editing on this piece was provided by Kathy Cornwell
Additional story development for this series was provided by Cassie Boorn