As told by Joanne Dodge before the NH Breast Cancer Coalition in November of 2004.

See Us – Hear us.  When I look back 10 years I realize what an amazing title that is.  For too many years, the word cancer was not spoken.  And Kana Riley was determined to give women with breast cancer the opportunity to be heard.

Kana was an author of children’s books and had at least two novels trying to get out.  Being an author she understood what it meant to be able to express herself in writing.  She also understood that putting a story on paper allows people to tell of  their joy, their pain, and their fear and to share these feelings with the people they love.

I’d like to tell you about Kana, a woman who touched so many people with her love, her sense of humor and her strength.  Following are some excerpts from the book that has been trying to get out of me, a book of emails, letters, and conversations between the two of us.

From Kana:  This is the first day in a very long time when I have had no work.  Am I writing?  Am I cleaning drawers?  Am I weeding the garden?  No. No. And no.  I’m picking up things and putting them down in different places where I’m sure never to find them again. 

Mostly I’m writing to say that ten years ago tonight I was in the Brigham waiting to have my left breast removed.  That was so long ago that they kept me in the hospital for four days!  Ah, the good old days.   It gets discouraging, doesn’t it, when we seem no closer to a cure or cause than we were when we first got involved.

I had a thought about sunshine, which I’m beginning to miss.  This is a tough time of year here.  The trees are late to lose their leaves, the sun is low, and the house is chilly and dank.  I think it’s time for us both to commit to 10 minutes a day of sitting in whatever sunshine we can find at high noon.  Can’t hurt!

Interesting little development: I’m going to be dong a brief talk and book signing for Voices of Breast Cancer at a breast cancer event in Concord next week.  Can you believe?  Someone’s interested in the book after all this time.  I figure the book signing is practice I can use – hopefully.  I’m trying not to get nervous.

I’m feeling very cancery what with the newsletter and this book thing coming up.  So forgive me all the Big C talk.  This may be confidential, but it really has me steamed.  Seems people at (one of the locations that had requested the photo exhibit) wanted to delete any mention that some of the people had died.  Can you believe it?  Too negative, they said, too scary.  AAAAARGH! 

The talk at Concord Hospital went well.  I dressed up in a white suit and pretended I was in costume as a public person.  They pinned a corsage and a mike on me and off I went.  What was fun was the book signing.  At first I was really nervous, but after a while I realized that people really wanted to talk to me and to Lucy (Metting who also spoke) in order to tell their stories – my mother died of cancer, my sister had cancer – that kind of thing.  It was nice to connect to so many people.  And we actually sold 20 – 30 books.

The other day I lost a big paycheck, and still have not found it.  I remembered your St. Anthony story and so have been asking him to look around for me.  Found a gold earring that I’d given up for gone under the front seat of my car and Dick found another pair that Carol had given me in his jacket pocket.  So I guess we know that St. A. is good for earrings.  I still haven’t found the check.  I don’t know who the saint of lost checks is.

I told Kana that during my blueberry picking, I cam across a chickadee names Spike.  I told Spike to fly off and visit Kana and this was her response.

Good morning.  Well, events got in the way of blackberrying yesterday, so I never got to see if Spike had arrived.  Last night I sat on the deck looking for him, but he wasn’t around.  A lovely bird in a distant tree seemed to be telling me that he was on his way however.  I hoped she was right.

I needn’t have worried.  There he was, with a friend, chirping away in the tree right outside my bedroom window bright and early this morning.  I’ve just returned from the blackberry patch where the two of them kept me company for a while.  When it started to rain they showed more sense than I have and got out of it.

So as we celebrate Christmas, we are in part celebrating our own birth, our own human adventure, our own invaluable, irreplaceable being on this Earth.  We honor the moment when we were thrust into the company of humankind, tiny, dependent, and loved.  We celebrate our need to proclaim our holy existence.  

For Christmas, I believe, is about living.  It is about living with each other. It is about being fully human.  Later on, come spring, our spirits can soar, our souls can expand into the long days. We can perhaps be reborn in God. 

An email to me dated April 20, 2001

Very dear friends,

Kana died at three o’clock on Thursday afternoon April 19 with a calm and gentle heart, as she lived.  We miss her deeply.