Amy Rogers-Nazarov

My mother is in the habit of  lighting candles in honor of people she has never seen before.

Likewise, people who have  never met my mom, whose name is Carol Rogers, also light candles with her in  mind. These are virtual candles, not made of wax and wicks. They are tiny,  animated things burning on the World Wide Web, their yellow flames buffeted by  perpetual, imaginary winds.

The candle lighters are part  of a listserv, an e-mail-based server that allows users to create, manage and  control electronic “mailing lists” on a network, in this case 

. My mom’s once  straight hair was growing in as tight and curly as a spring lamb’s coat when she  first logged on and read some of the postings from fellow breast cancer  survivors.

She’d never been  particularly drawn to the Internet, but soon she was telling me about the women  she’d “met” online. “Champagne’s situation is a lot like mine,” Mom would say,  referring to another poster by her web handle. “She also had stage 2 invasive  ductal carcinoma, with no node involvement.”

Soon Mom—“Birch” to her new  friends&mdash;was logging on multiple times a day to read news about how the first  post-mastectomy date went for “Selena,” or to send a reassuring note to a newly  diagnosed poster. Women by the hundreds were adding posts every hour, comparing  notes on the mundane and the overwhelming physical and emotional responses to  the disease. 

Mom has become particularly  close to a dozen or so women who celebrate one another’s recovery milestones and  mourn each other’s setbacks. One terrible month last summer, two of them were  stricken anew with cancer. Even as the candles were lit and the fervent prayers  posted, both “DCgal” and “Precocious” died.

Selfishly I wondered whether  Mom’s grief would impede her own healing. Choosing my words as carefully as I  could, I reminded her of the many list participants who are getting better,  including her. She wrote back that she had decided to limit her use of the  list—a little bit, anyway. 

“I make a place inside for  cancer to live,” she said to me later. “And when it comes out, I send it back to  its place. I’m getting better at it.”

Her comment helped me recognize that  Mom’s “cyber-sisters” are uniquely positioned to support her in her recovery.  While her local friends lovingly sustained her with casseroles, get-well cards  and gifts left on the doorstep, none but those who have lain back to receive the  chemo drip or donned the wig can truly grasp the enormity. As Mom’s friend  “DarkEyes” e-mailed to me recently, “We have all stared down the tunnel of our  own mortality and have experienced some kind of shift because of this. I think  that binds you, like people who have been in a war together. You just  know.”

Of course DarkEyes, Birch  and all the others could reap benefits by meeting with other survivors in  person, but scheduling or space limitations could limit such gatherings. With  this listserv and others out there like it, women know they’ll always have  someone, in some time zone, to “talk to” on a night when cancer looms large in  the darkness, and the escape of sleep refuses to come.

When I was a reporter, I  wrote about the high-tech world for almost a decade, covering the speeds of the  routers that underpin the Internet, yet focusing little on the human connection  it enables. I am awed when I consider that billions of electrical impulses  traversing networks of computers worldwide have created a haven for people who  share a terrifying disease.

Mom  and Dad have now met twice, in person, with small groups of the breastcancer.org  women and their partners; they shop, take walks, eat and talk. I haven’t met  them yet, but from time to time, I light a candle in their names. My gratitude  to them is as boundless as the cyberspace that led my mother to a virtual place  where authentic hope burns brilliantly.

Articles

I am awed when I consider that billions of electrical impulses traversing networks of computers worldwide have created a haven for people who share a terrifying disease.

Amy Rogers-Nazarov

v4n2 - Connecting Online

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