From death, hope blooms eternal

Dying, it used to be said, is the one thing everyone does alone.

But maybe not any more. There is a growing trend — perhaps dating back to the original concept of the Vietnam Wall — to conjoin the passing of an individual with an effort to put that death in context.

These collective memorials can be expensive and elaborate pieces of marble dedicated to victims of a particular war or disease. Or, they can be as simple as one of those roadside floral displays that say only: “Someone died here on this highway. Right here. Think about it.”

What I like about Lynchburg’s Awareness Garden, which is currently observing its fifth anniversary, is that it isn’t focused solely upon death. Some of the bricks that make up its gently curving paths are dedicated to those who have died from cancer, but others honor people who survived it. That’s also what the garden’s bell is for, placed there to be rung in celebration at the end of someone’s cancer treatments.

“Whenever I attend one of those ceremonies,” said Sarah Williamson, who works with the Awareness Garden Foundation, “it gives me chills.”

Lalla Hancock Sydnor, who brought the Awareness Garden idea to Lynchburg, once rang that bell. Sadly, her triumph proved premature.

And taken only by itself, the Awareness Garden would also be nothing more than a poignant but ultimately futile gesture. Merely accumulating and laying down bricks would be like putting together one of those national magazine covers filled with the names of American dead in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Expanding the body count doesn’t lead to a corresponding expansion in caring — in fact, the more enormous a problem is shown to be, the more hopelessness it creates.

Yet just as the Awareness Garden was meant to be a physical gateway to the Blackwater Creek Trail, so it seems to be evolving into a gateway into the heart of the cancer issue.

On Friday, the group will hold a number of fundraisers (you can go to www.awarenessgarden.com for more information, or call 384-6740), including a performance by local singer Paddy Dougherty. Some of the money raised will go to the upkeep of the garden itself, but the foundation is also planning to fund several scholarships for students pursuing careers in health care — somewhat like a memorial for murder victims contributing money for law enforcement.

Coincidentally, this was the week that Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to the U.S. Supreme Court after surgery for pancreatic cancer. I can remember when hardly anyone ever announced publicly that they had this disease, because the reaction would either be horror or pity. The question wasn’t whether you would die from it, but how soon.

Gradually, the seesaw balancing life and death has begun to tip in the opposite direction, even with the “bad” cancers like Ginsburg’s.

As I mentioned in a column last year, after two friends had died of cancer, it seems that we devote a lot more time and money in this country trying to keep terrorists at bay than finding a cure for cancer. And here in Central Virginia, as in most of the country, cancer is by far the greater threat.

Perhaps the scariest thing about cancer, even now, is that it grows quietly from inside us. But then, you can say the same thing about hope.