Cancer, loss and the world of social media

Ten years ago this year my mum was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. I remember the date and the conversation like it was yesterday. I remember the day she told us it had spread, the day she told us it was terminal and the day she passed away so clearly it cold have happened this morning. The pain, the shock, the horror and the utter sadness and desolation dulls over time but is still there. My mum died weeks before my first child was born and therefore his birthdays mark both happiness and sadness that my mum isn't visibly there to see what a mensch we have somehow managed to create. I often talk about my mum to people, although not really her cancer or her final hours. I decided along time ago that I didn't want my memories of my mum as a bald cancer patient, unable to see, bloated from steroids and needing help with everything and so although I think of them I rarely share them with others.
When my mum was diagnosed, I told my closest friends. They told others on a need to know basis. They let me cry, they let me be stoic. They let me panic that she wasn't going to make it to my wedding. (I got married weeks after she finished her first round of chemotherapy) Other then wait for news, sit by a hospital bed, read the newspaper to her I couldn't do much else.
After her diagnosis, one thing my siblings and I did was complete the London moonwalk. Between us we raised over £3,000 and it was great to see mum at the end , in her woolly hat cheering us on. It was a great sense of achievement and for the first and only time in her cancer battle I felt as if I was doing something productive with her diagnosis and with that felt slightly less powerless.
Over the past ten years, unfortunately cancer hasn't gone away. My aunt and my cousin have successfully fought breast cancer in the last decade and there are many more others who have lost loved ones to what my dad calls the 'bastard disease'
These days, everywhere I turn I see that someone is watching someone they love fight cancer. Is cancer more common or is it just the world we live in is so much smaller that everyone shares their lives with everyone else. Over the past month I have been following www.supermansamuel.blogspot.co.uk as well as the wonderful www.turboshrimp.wordpress.com that have dealt with cancer and how to react and get through it and it has bought me into this whole new world of putting your personal feelings out there for all to see. Do I feel comfortable with that? If my mum was diagnosed in 2013 rather than 2003 would I have done it? I'm don't know the answer but I know that writing is cathartic and hopefully these blogs have given at least the writers the ability to breathe out loud (watching someone you love fight cancer seemed to me like I was permanently holding my breath).
I have also been amazed by the success of the #spitformum campaign that has attempted to find a bone marrow for leukaemia suffer, Sharon Berger. The courage of the family spearheading this campaign and the way they have put the selves out there is nothing short of remarkable. Jewish bone marrow donor registrations have risen by approximately 400% as a result of their campaign which has been conducted mostly by social media.
Ten years ago, when my mum was diagnosed, Twitter was a newborn and Facebook was still a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye. At times I was so frustrated with the way life carried on as normal for other people I wanted to scream from the rooftops 'my mum's dying, you must do something' but was simply unable to do it. In 2013, we have social media to do it for us... It is the prefect way to air frustrations and share problems. However, this means that there is an inevitable clash of our real life, rather than our anecdotal life. Are we happy about that? 
For me, I'm glad that social media can be that vent. Some of my friends were amazingly supportive during this tough period of my life when I had no vehicle to use to shout out and share. I'm delighted that those who have shared have felt courageous enough to do so and hope that they are able to use it to get the strength that they needed get through these dark times. 
As for me, who didn't get the happy ending in this case, I have learnt one thing; find your happy endings elsewhere and be delighted for those who get theirs.

The following people have led me to writing this: the Slaters, the Pressers, The Blakes, Danny Fresco, Rachel Fidler, Debs Blausten, the Bergers, Ben Braude, Rabbi Phyllis Sommer and her SupermanSam.