“You chose the wrong bitch!”

These are words thrown from the corner of the ring opposite that of the Big C, words that resound with every intention to overcome, indeed, in this case, words reinforced with confidence and resolve: After I beat you, I’ll write my story of triumph.

The coward that I am, I have only admiration for people like her. I just cannot myself imagine where, in the face of life’s ultimate fight, they get their strength. Cancer, after all, is an enemy that fights from within.

In comparison, the threat in my case, if just as insidious, may not be as aggressive: diabetes on my mom’s side and heart problems on my dad’s. I may have even delayed their onset. At my age, I can no longer die young—the genetic battle is already half won. And if, by grace, I make it to 85 or 91, as my folks did, I would have deprived the enemy of clear victory: kindly old age would have stolen the ball to score the winning shot. Anyway, that’s my game plan.

It’s now all a matter of maintaining a certain weight, doing regular, moderate exercise and eating healthy. It sounds easy, but it’s not— not when you’re on a budget like me.

Hefty investment

Fresh and organic costs. The required juicer and blender alone are a hefty investment. I had hoped to put off the regimen—I could still chew well, on an almost complete set of teeth. But with age and overuse, for chewing a kilo of green leaves every day, not to mention the belatedly discovered aggravation from having worn incomplete braces in my forties, my jaw became misaligned, and my bite needed readjustment. The correction called for a retainer on my lower teeth. While friends moved on to canes, I was back to retainers.

Well, the retainer has done wonders. It has, for one thing, stopped the ringing in my ears and the clicking my jaws make. And where before my tongue had to collect itself and make a fist to allow me to swallow, it takes much less effort now. My troubles may seem small compared to those of others, but I could only be getting some practice before the bigger ones come.

Others most definitely already have it tougher. I got a text from a friend who endured chronic and sometimes paralyzing back pains to accompany her husband to the doctor: his own heart condition had taken a serious turn. She sat and waited anxiously, carrying her aching back upright. But, of course, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

But who am I to complain? Indeed, at this time, it’s particularly insensitive. Supertyphoon “Yolanda” has raised the bar of suffering. It calls for stripping Christmas of all extravagance and of stripping it down to its selfless sense of love, hope and charity.

Daily struggle

Surely no one suffers Christmas more than the survivors of Yolanda, who may have lost their very future along with everything and everyone else: they are called to heroism in their daily struggle to live on.

In the spirit of a blighted Christmas, we have all made considerable adjustments, to be sure. My husband and I, for our part, have slashed our wish list, dropping travel plans from our bucket list. Nothing would seem enough, but propriety itself becomes confused where tragedy is ranged against tragedy.

An old classmate ponders with the rest of her family whether it would be appropriate to celebrate the 80th birthday of her critically ailing husband. The family is still wrestling with the issue.

A younger friend, on the other hand, preempted any debate, and just sent out invitations to family and friends to celebrate with her and her husband their 37th wedding anniversary today. He is himself not well. In mid-November this decisive one in fact started decorating her home not with a last Christmas in mind, but the best one.

And why not, indeed?

She and the wrong bitch must belong in the same class of fighters as the philosopher Red Smith had in mind generally when he said in an eulogy for a fellow sportswriter: “Dying is no big deal; the least of us will manage it. Living is the trick.”