The Poetry of Survivorship
Cancer has a way of hijacking the smallest parts of life. Ed Frauenheim, in his raw and honest account of his appendix cancer diagnosis, shows how the disease sneaks into everything. His wife, artist Rowena Richie, captures that perfectly in her poem about blueberries. Not medical records. Not treatment schedules. Blueberries rolling around the freezer. A domestic mess that turns into a metaphor for survival, uncertainty, and care.
That’s the detail that makes you stop. Because cancer lives in the moments people rarely talk about. The diagnosis and treatment plan matter, but so does the way cancer creeps into grocery lists, meal prep, and the sound of blueberries scattering across the floor. Rowena’s poem gives those moments dignity. It says the mundane is part of the experience. It’s where the fear and tenderness actually show up.
Ed writes with clarity about the shock of hearing “stage four” and the whiplash of learning his particular cancer still comes with hope. He calls out the absurdity of having “jelly belly,” where mucus-producing cells invade the abdomen. He jokes about looser stools being a better deal than a death sentence. That kind of honesty matters. Because living with cancer means learning how to hold terror and humor in the same breath.
What I see in Ed and Rowena’s work is a refusal to sanitize the experience. They talk about prayer calls, sports-induced tumor pain, and screaming “WHAT THE FUCK?!” at a diagnosis. They let the blueberries roll around without pretending they can be neatly gathered up. And in that mess, you see love, community, and the will to keep living.
That’s what makes their story stick. Cancer does not only happen in hospitals. It happens in kitchens, in freezers, on prayer porches, in late-night basketball games. That’s the truth most people don’t want to say out loud. Ed and Rowena just did.
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SOURCE ➡️ https://open.substack.com/pub/frauentimes/p/cancer-comes-and-there-go-the-blueberries?r=wlxsl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false