Yesterday I went down a rabbit hole and looked up famous women entertainers who died of cancer at a relatively young age. I learned some interesting facts. For example:
Audrey Hepburn, 62, died of colon cancer on January 20, 1993, thirty-one years to the day before Kara's celebration of life.
Elizabeth Montgomery, also 62, died of colon cancer on May 18, 1995, two days short of six years after Kara and I went on our first date.
Gilda Radner, 42, who shares my mother's birthday, died of ovarian cancer on May 20, 1989, the very same day Kara and I went on our first date. While we were watching The Great Outdoors on VHS, Saturday Night Live was airing its tribute to her.
And Farrah Fawcett was also 62 when she died of anal cancer on June 25, 2009, three days short of my mother's birthday and twenty years and five weeks after Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer on the day Kara and I went on our first date.
Why do I bring this up?
First, I was an obituary writer for seven years. After a while you start to see patterns in the facts of people's lives and become interested in them... we're all in this together, after all. We're sandwiched between beginning and ending dates, and though we're all unique, we're all pretty much alike, too (I am guessing that if you are reading this, we both enjoy breathing and we might very well also like pizza).
Second, three of these women died of butt-related cancer (pardon my non-technical, Kara-style bluntness).
Third, and this seems common to pretty much every younger celebrity death caused by cancer, a lot of the ensuing media conversation focuses on how the death could have been avoided and how health education could prevent more people from dying of the disease.
In 1991, for example, Gene Wilder wrote an essay for People magazine looking back on Gilda Radner's last days and how she could have been saved with proper knowledge of ovarian cancer and the correct diagnosis. Radner was diagnosed on Oct. 24, 1986, one day short of sixteen years before Kara and I got married (side note, her Yorkshire terrier was named Sparkle!),
On September 28, 2023, the Farrah Fawcett Foundation honored Katie Couric for her efforts to raise colon cancer awareness. Couric's husband died at age 42 of colon cancer on Jan. 24, 1998, twenty-four years before Kara's celebration of life with four days to spare.
Okay, but again, why do I bring this up?
Exploring this topic has gotten me thinking about how I would talk about Kara's death if she were famous. I imagine many people in such a position would be heavily influenced by friends, family, peers, medical authorities, and the media, and likewise try to raise awareness of colorectal cancer in the hope that they might, to paraphrase Gene Wilder, "in some small way help the other Karas out there."
But Kara is not famous, and instead I am influenced by her ideas of how she wanted to make an impact after she received her stage 4 colorectal cancer diagnosis.
Contrary to a common view of stage 4 cancer patients, Kara did not see herself as a victim. She saw herself as facing a healing crisis that gave her the opportunity to transform and help others through life challenges. She wanted to become an influencer, a guiding light to those struggling with fear, self-doubt, and overwhelming adversity. In particular, she wanted to show the "other Karas out there" how to stand up for themselves, build their true soul-family, keep working on healing, and express who they are through whatever art form excites them.
She also wanted to increase awareness in our society about how to evolve and communicate beyond our collective anxiety about death, because it cuts us off from finding meaning in our lives and makes us suffer even more in the face of something that is ubiquitous and inevitable.
There are plenty of public figures like Gene Wilder and Katie Couric raising awareness to reduce the death rates of a disease that was fatal to their partner. There are not so many celebrities raising awareness about the shadow side of occupying bodies that will eventually crap out on us (pardon the Kara-style colorectal pun) no matter what we do to preserve ourselves, and how we can still, like Gilda Radner with her dog, give even a so-called terminal diagnosis some Sparkle.
It can be argued that in addition to celebrity culture, the medical profession is one of the strongest influences on our views and feelings about going to the grave. If that's the case, then we are looking for wisdom about our mortality from an institution that also struggles with death anxiety, due to factors such as training, work environment, fatigue, and plain old being human. No wonder so much emphasis is placed on prevention in public conversations about famous people who died of cancer, even older people like Charles Schulz, who was 77 when he died of colon cancer.
Of his father's death, Schulz's son is quoted as saying: "He didn’t choose to quit drawing Peanuts. Colon cancer stole it away from him, then took his life. … I miss my father. Get tested. Please don’t forget.”
Prompted by bereavement connected with a public figure, collective death anxiety can be a powerful motivator for increasing cancer screenings. This has been observed in what has been called "the Couric effect," a term used to describe the impact on consumers' health decisions when celebrities like Couric, who televised her colonoscopy, share their medical experiences. Yet, underlying the health benefits of increasing cancer awareness, death anxiety continues to dog us with its chilling subliminal message: "Whatever you do with your life... DON'T DIE BECAUSE IT'S F***ING HORRIBLE!"
This is true in other areas of healthcare as well, and can also be observed in fitness, mainstream media, popular entertainment, social media, consumerism, and political conflicts, to such an extent that death anxiety may have serious negative effects on our mental and physical health.
Even a physician, Larry Dossey, M.D., has stated that fear of death "has caused more misery in human history than all the diseases put together."
Going back to the question, "How would I talk about Kara's death if she were famous," I would prefer to steer the conversation away from disease prevention and avoidance of death. Kara would not want me to shine a spotlight on her life as one that ended in a theft that could have been avoided. She would not want me to join the bereaved public voices that may be adding to our fear of death. She would not want me to draw on her story as the basis of a health awareness campaign that could reinforce or heighten death anxiety.
If anything, she would want me to continue her efforts to put a face to death acceptance and show how it can help us grow and thrive and find meaning in our lives, whether or not we are diagnosed with an incurable, life-threatening disease. This is not to say skip your doctor's exam or meditate on death constantly, only to point out there are so many inspiring stories that can teach us more about ourselves if we begin to accept death and put more of our collective energy into learning how to live instead of trying to dodge the inevitable.
No knock on Wilder or Couric or any famous person working to raise health awareness in the public eye, but this is where true education lies.
If Kara were famous and I were writing about her for a major entertainment magazine, I would lead with the following anecdote:
On the day that changed our lives forever, we were sitting in a private room waiting for the results of my wife's colonoscopy. After what seemed like an hour, a doctor came in and told us he couldn't complete the procedure because he found a "significant mass" in her rectum.
"You mean like... cancer?" Kara asked.
"Yes," the doctor said, slumping in his chair. "I believe so."
I buried my head in my hands and quietly began sobbing.
Now most people, including me, would either demand more details or even argue with the well-dressed young man sitting ruefully across from us. But instead, Kara turned to me, massaged my arm, and said, "It's okay, babe," with a motherly tone in her voice as if a mechanic had just told us our Kia needed a new clutch.
The date was May 20, 2019, the thirtieth anniversary of our first date, as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer and who shared a birthday with my mother, Cheryl Muir, who died of lung cancer three years before Kara learned she had colorectal cancer and eight years before I am finishing up this blog post about younger women who simply did what we will all do in one form or another someday.
There is a lot more to say about cancer and death anxiety, but I will sign off because I have already gone on long enough.
I know some of this got a little macabre, depending on your worldview, so... if you stuck this far, thank you for listening to my DEAD talk (couldn't resist, last Kara-style joke for the evening, ba-dum-dum).
What it all comes down to is that we could all have more pizza in our lives... including gluten-free and vegan.
Until next time.
--Charles Austin Muir
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