In the Press
When your name tag carries more than a nameBy Marion Franck
Davis Enterprise, September 23, 2001
Today I bring you the column I was working on before the catastrophe. Like everything else it's not quite the same as before.
The story begins with my decision to attend a cancer conference called "Healing Journeys". I don't have cancer, but I wanted to go because the conference was free, close to home and featured a writer I admire.
However, immediately after I clicked onto the Healing Journeys Web site and filled in my name and address, I encountered a problem: questions I couldn't answer. Was I a cancer survivor? Was I a support person for a family member or friend with cancer? Was I a health care provider?
I didn't fit any of the categories.
Thinking I might avoid this awkwardness on the phone, I dialed the registration number. After recording my name and address, the pleasant-voiced person on the other end asked me those same darn questions.
"I'm a journalist," I answered. "I don't quite fit".
That wasn't true. I'm a supporter, really; my mother succumbed to the disease. I didn't want to say that to the woman on the phone, because I knew I would cry.
Maybe she had spoken to others like me. "We'll count you as a supporter," she said. "I'll send you details and a name tag."
When my name tag showed up a few days later, it was emblazoned with a shiny red heart. I puzzled about that, thinking that cancer survivors should have received the hearts. And then I started wondering if their name tags would be marked, too.
Yes.
In fact, the first thing that happened as people arrived at Freeborn Hall was that someone handed them a name tag holder to put around their neck. Soon the sunlit patio of the Memorial Union, a place I associate with sturdy college students, was full of people with hanging tags that labeled their suffering.
The symbols were explained in opening remarks by Jan Adrian, whom I came to see as a genius of compassion because she organized this remarkable conference. Yellow circles meant "cancer," red circles meant "breast cancer," blue circles meant "metastasized breast cancer" and green circles meant "health care provider,". "Supporters" were the only ones with the heart symbol, and we received the loudest applause when we stood to identify ourselves at the beginning of the conference. I felt embarrassed, as if any applause in my direction was not honestly gained. And I continued to marvel at the colored circles people wore, revealing both a devastating emotional struggle and intimate facts about their bodies.
Red circle name tags surrounded me, on women both young and old. That famous number "1 in 8" for breast cancer suddenly became real, in dozens and dozens of faces among the 1200 conference participants. Every time I saw a blue metastasis circle, my heart sank and my eyes searched the face of the tag-wearer, wondering how she found the strength to persevere.
I ended up staying for much more of the conference than I had intended, and on the second day I ran into someone I had known years ago. As she spoke, I noticed her eyes darting away from my face to peek at my name tag, something I had been doing with other people all weekend long. I was touched by her worry that I had cancer.
Mostly, though, I sat among strangers and listened to wonderful speakers, singers and actors who had both cancer and optimism.
Equally remarkable were the people in the seats, who demonstrated courage just by putting on their name tags, especially the 50-year-old man next to me who had only learned about his cancer the previous week.
I simply don't know how to describe to you what it feels like to sit in a room of people who share a terrible physical struggle and to listen with them to speakers who can't promise recovery, but offer hope for finding joy and strength in their lives.
I knew, from the warm feeling around me, that many of those people had found peace already, that cancer had propelled them into living the kind of meaningful life that escapes so many of us in the helter skelter of getting through our days.
On Sunday afternoon, we were asked to turn in our name tag holders as we left the front door. I watched as everyone pulled their name and sticker out of the plastic. Into bright sunlight, we all emerged, unlabeled, like firefighters out of uniform. Walking, talking, waving, we blended in with passers-by, re-entering the "normal" world, which (as it turned out) ended two days later.
A lot has happened since then, but I haven't been able to get those name tags out of my head, nor the moment when they were gone and everybody at the conference looked like everybody else. How hard it is, in ordinary life, to tell the hurting from the unhurting.
We need to be kind to everyone, because you just never know.
— Marion Franck lives in Davis with her family. Reach her by e-mail at marionf@omsoft.com. Her column appears in The Davis Enterprise on Sundays.