The People We See Every Day
“It's hard to make sense of a whole page of photos, each one representing a life cut short. You scan down each row, and your eye will catch one picture or another.”
The following essay is from the NPR My Cancer weekly podcast:
I have lived a rich life. But I think I'm going to be remembered for two things. I produced a broadcast called "The Fallen." And I have cancer.
I was the executive producer of Nightline, and we wanted to somehow honor the American soldiers who had died in Iraq . In the end, "The Fallen" was a very simple program. Ted Koppel read the names of the dead while their pictures appeared on the screen. It was controversial at the time. But now similar tributes have become routine. Some of the same newspapers that condemned us then now regularly show the faces of those who've paid the ultimate price. Which is right because, in the end, it's not about politics. It's about those men and women.
It's hard to make sense of a whole page of photos, each one representing a life cut short. You scan down each row, and your eye will catch one picture or another. A smile that speaks of mischief. Eyes that show knowledge far beyond their years. Or a face that's so young, full of so much promise and hope, and empty of knowledge of what is to come.
Our broadcast was not original. I'm old enough to remember an issue of Life magazine from the 60s which showed the faces of all the soldiers who died in Vietnam in one week. Those images were the inspiration for our program. I remember looking at the faces and having the same reaction. Here was a cross-section of Americans who, tragically, only had one thing in common.
If "The Fallen" was something I did, my cancer is simply something that happened to me. I got a disease. I have to admit, I usually don't read articles about cancer. It eats up enough of my life as it is. But last week's issue of New York Magazine did something both remarkable and familiar. Two pages of faces -- young, old, racially diverse -- all faces of people who have cancer.
The magazine listed their names, ages, and what type of cancer they had or have. I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to all that. I scanned down the rows of photos and the same thing happened. My eyes would lock on one picture. A little four-year-old girl, what was she doing there? Faces that looked totally normal, as of course they should. The pain doesn't always show on the outside. And some faces with a look of total fatigue, a look we all know so well. A look I've seen in the mirror.
You realize something when you look at these photos of the dead from far-off wars, and the wounded from a war fought every day here at home. They're the people we see every day. The people we live with. The people we pass on the street. They are us.
I look at the pictures of the dead in Iraq and remember what it was like over there. I remember my friends, not all of whom came home. I look at the pictures of the people with cancer, and I see myself.
7:38 AM ET | 05-29-2007 | permalink
