When Lynn Redgrave died this week of breast cancer I used the F word.  I don’t usually do that, but like its rhyming counterpart the S word, the F word, which I usually hate and find disgustingly ill used, fits like a glove when coupled with cancer.

I was putting my daughter’s hair in pony tails this morning wondering how many wonderful people do we have to lose to this disease before we get so ticked off we buckle down and figure it out?  And I don’t just mean a cure to breast cancer, though I’ll dance in the streets and pass out fake cigars when that happens.  I mean a cause.  Why in the world are we getting this disease and what are we doing in this world to cause it?  Is it the food, the pollution, the atmosphere, the color of my dress, my shoes too tight, WHAT?  What is going on?

My daughter chose two little pink elastics to put in her hair so I wrapped them around her long blonde locks and began to think.  I love a pink ribbon as much as the next person, but what I’d really like to see out there plastered on every soup can and body lotion and tote bag is a big fat nothing.  As in we solved the problem, there is no more breast cancer.  We don’t need them, we’re not using them, take your ribbons back, we solved the breast cancer problem.

That way we all live the way we’d hoped for before cancer broke in and stole our long and happy lives.  Then people like Lynn Redgrave would still be here.

And we could save the pink ribbons to wrap around the bundled braids of  little girls everywhere, where they belong.

Posted May 6th, 2010 by