Post GRAPHIC IV

GRAPHIC IV was May 22, 2010. It's a week post GRAPHIC IV and I'm still rattled from it both emotionally and physically. It was the best and worst night. I may try to come back and write more but this article says a lot:

This was written by MP Mueller for The New York Times:

I was going to write about what happened to our agency the first time we really sat down and came up with a wish list of clients, but my head and heart keep going back to something that happened Saturday night in Austin.

That night about 400 people came together at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum for a rowdy fund-raiser, the Graphic IV Art Bra Fashion Show and Art Auction. The event, sponsored by the Pink Ribbon Cowgirls, a group of young breast cancer survivors, was not your typical fund-raiser.

Attendees were greeted at the door by a model who pointed at her bra and asked, “Want to take this home with you?” A steady stream of off-color jokes and puns, mostly about breasts, was unleashed. Art bras, some designed by local celebrities, were sold to raise money through live and silent auctions. Christy Pipkin, executive director of the Nobelity Project (which grew out of the movie “Nobelity,” which she co-produced with her husband), was there, rocking her new chemo pixie. Gail Chovan, an Austin fashion designer and “surthrivor,” showed off a bra that was made by Deborah Harry, the singer, and sported well-placed little black cowboy hats.

Supported by friends, family and doctors, the survivors shed their inhibitions as well as their shirts. Emboldened by their mission to raise money for the cause, the women strutted around with chests out, having come to terms (theirs) with the mammaries that had made an attempt on their lives. Men were given permission, even encouraged, to make eye contact — so long as they bid up the bras!

Together, the crowd remembered two young models who had died since the last Art Bra gathering. We raised a glass to Molly Ivins, the feisty Texas journalist who succumbed to breast cancer in 2009. Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued and won Roe v. Wade, and who also happens to be a survivor, occupied front row seats with her posse. Nearly 20 survivors strutted down a catwalk to pumping music, modeling decorated bras, vamping for the camera and shining from the reflected love of the crowd.

One of the women sashaying down the runway was the daughter of a woman I had chanced to meet earlier in the evening along with her twin sister. All three women stood tall and proud; all three have had breast cancer. When we’d met, Mom told me that her daughter was going to be a model and pointed her out in the crowd. All of 30, her bald head held high, she was fighting breast cancer for the second time in five years.

Now, a third of the way down the catwalk, she collapsed. People watched, unsure if it was part of the show or if she had tripped. It soon became obvious that this was not part of the script. Her mother rushed forward from her second-row seat, a doctor was called, and event organizers surrounded her. Two women held her feet high so blood would flow to her heart. People took turns doing chest compressions. The doctor ran in search of a defibrillator and we heard, “she’s coding!”

Someone finally found the dial, cutting the music and, mercifully, the spotlights. Someone else led the crowd in a spontaneous prayer. Those surrounding the woman implored her, beseeched her, willed her to breathe. Others stumbled out the door and into the night. Strangers embraced. The ambulance arrived and the young woman, pale and unconscious, was rushed away.

Bursting with bawdy reverie 20 minutes earlier, the museum was now in shock. The director of the Breast Cancer Resource Center took the stage. “This,” she said, “is what we do all the time — rally around and support those who the disease knocks down.” She said that the other models wanted the show to go on. And so it did. At the evening’s close, we were told the woman was stable and breathing on her own. More rivulets of black mascara.

We all have our ways of dealing with death and mortality. It’s been six years since I finished my chemo treatments. For the next two years, I lived with an urgency to look at every blue sky and to milk every sunset for the last rays of the day. I was a resource for a steady flow of newly diagnosed women and raised money for the cause.

My daughter, 9 at the time, and I scoured the neighborhood on bulky trash day, collecting discarded lawn mowers in alleys and tossing them into the back of my old pick-up. We took them home, painted them pink and distracted ourselves from our fears. With 12 pink mowers and another 12 pink grass clippers, the Cut Out Cancer Precision Lawn Mowing Drill Team marched in the Race for the Cure. My 72-year old mom wore majorette boots and marched holding our “drill team” banner for the entire race. Even my Dad, 78 and more accustomed to a red Toro, gamely pushed a pink mower that day.

I’ve learned we all have stuff we are dealing with, whether it be cancer, a sick child or parent, a lost chance at something we desired in our heart of hearts. As the years have passed since my diagnosis, I’ve told myself it’s not coming back, and I’ve transitioned from cancer survivor back to private citizen, from urgency back to complacency.

Surrounded Saturday night by women bravely dealing with this unwelcome visitor, that jolt came back — the reminder that life is indeed fragile and short. (How do we manage to forget?) Doing what you truly love each day is the difference between existing and living. Are you doing what you truly love? If not, how can you get there? Are you passionate about your work? Do you have a dream you own, a purpose? If not, take the time to reach into your soul and define one. Embrace it and strut down the runway of life with all you’ve got.

Let’s make a pact to cheer each other on.