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“Having cancer gave me membership
in an elite club that I'd rather not belong to.”
– Gilda Radner
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I had wanted to wrap this book up in a neat little package about a girl who is a
comedienne from Detroit, becomes famous in New York, with all the world coming her way, gets this
horrible disease of cancer, is brave and fights it, learning all the skills she needs to get through it,
and then, miraculously, things are neatly tied up and she gets well. I wanted to be able to write on
the book jacket: “Her triumph over cancer” or “She wins the cancer war.” I wanted a
perfect ending, so I sat down to write the book with the ending in place before there even was
an ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a
clear beginning, middle and end. Like my life, this book has ambiguity. Like my life, this book is
about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's
going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity, as Joanna said.
When I was little, Dibby's cousin had a dog, just a mutt, and the dog was pregnant. I
don't know how long dogs are pregnant, but she was due to have her puppies in about a week. She was out
in the yard one day and got in the way of the lawn mower, and her two hind legs got cut off. They
rushed her to the vet and he said, “I can sew her up, or you can put her to sleep if you want, but
the puppies are okay. She'll be able to deliver the puppies.”
Dibby's cousing said, “Keep her alive.”
So the vet sewed up her backside and over the next week the dog learned to walk. She
didn't spend any time worrying, she just learned to walk by taking two steps in the front and flipping
up her backside, and then taking two steps and flipping up her backside again. She gave birth to six
little puppies, all in perfect health. She nursed them and then weaned them. And when they learned to
walk, they all walked like her.
It's Always Something by Gilda Radner, Page 268-269.
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