In my Sunday school class, talk often turns to cancer. Everyone, it seems, has had a personal encounter. About 13 percent of the world’s deaths — almost one in seven — are said to be caused by the disease.
During almost three decades as a human-interest writer, my talks with cancer patients are burned into my memory.
I remember a lung cancer patient telling me about her fierce loneliness. I remember a prostate cancer survivor’s tearful memories of his pleading, backyard prayers.
This week, I talked to Bill and Nancye Wilson of Flattop Mountain. Mr. Wilson is four years into a battle with stomach cancer. He is doing well at the moment — still playing golf and riding his tractor — but his future is uncertain.
At the urging of friends, Mrs. Wilson has written an essay about her husband of 40 years. It’s a powerfully personal piece that traces the couple’s relationship from a junior-high friendship to grandparenthood to partners battling cancer.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson reared two daughters together in a one-bathroom house on Flattop Mountain in northern Hamilton County; the property has been in Mrs. Wilson’s family for almost 200 years.
On their first date, Billy borrowed his brother’s 1965 Mercury Comet to take Nancye to a movie. Somebody stole the hubcaps that night, but what Billy remembers most is being thoroughly smitten by the young woman on his arm.
“I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen — still do,” he said last week, squeezing his wife’s hand during an interview.
Mr. Wilson’s advanced stomach cancer was diagnosed on Feb. 3, 2005. In her essay, Mrs. Wilson remembers it as “the day the darkness descended.”
She recalls tearfully climbing into her husband’s hospital bed the next day, as he whispered to her repeatedly, “It’s going to be OK.” Almost immediately after his diagnosis, Mr. Wilson says, a spiritual awakening gave him a sense of inner calm.
That was especially true a few days later at Flattop Independent Church when congregational leaders huddled around Mr. Wilson at the end of a worship service.
“From that moment forward, I’ve been at ease,” Mr. Wilson said.
Soon, Mr. Wilson realized that his cancer put him on center stage. Suddenly, members of friends and family were searching his face for signs of his inner struggle over being faced with his own mortality.
Through several excruciating rounds of chemotherapy, members of the church would show up at the Wilsons’ front door with pinto beans and chicken soup.
Over time, Mrs. Wilson noticed subtle changes in her husband’s personality as he went to war with his disease.
“I can tell it has changed Billy,” she said. “Before, he was full of spit and vinegar. It’s deepened his faith. It’s real.”
People ask Mr. Wilson why he doesn’t talk more about his cancer. He says that he believes actions are more influential that speeches. People have told him that his smiles alone carry a powerful spiritual message of hope and grace.
“Nobody is promised tomorrow,” he says simply. “Every day is a gift.”
