Cancer leads to awkward conversations. Take this for example:

Uber driver: Are you in Houston for anything fun?
Me: No, just medical appointments at MD Anderson
Uber Driver: My grandmother has blood in her stool.

An interaction that starts normal enough suddenly runs off a cliff.
Conversational lemmings.

Some rare people know how to navigate these moments with grace. They say the right thing at the right time, and conversation flows naturally. The rest of us are apprentices. We stumble, we say clumsy things, and it gets awkward.

We aren’t naturally good at this.

So, let’s be awkward together. If you want to cry, we can cry. If you want to laugh, I’m good with that. If you want to make fun of me for being a “drama queen” for having cancer I promise I won’t be offended. And if you feel like you said something wrong, just know that I didn’t take it to heart.

There is enough loss in this situation. I don’t want friendships to feel out of sync as well.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, a good friend would come to my house and pray for me each Monday. She would start crying, apologize, and then cry some more. Then laugh about the fact that she kept crying and cry some more. And laugh and cry. A little awkward, but a lot of love. And those times are imprinted on me as some of the most special throughout this journey.

And as for that Uber ride – we continued to talk to our driver and realized she was scared. She had a close relationship with her grandmother and didn’t want to lose her. So, you see, it wasn’t an awkward conversation after all.  Just people in a car doing the best we could to care for each other.