Standing at Water’s Edge

Irony has a way of sometimes completely changing one’s trajectory. It was ironic that author Janice Post-White found herself deeply connected to cancer when Brennan, her four-year-old son, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Post-White, an oncology nurse and cancer educator, suddenly found herself as a fearful mother watching her vulnerable child facing the battle of his young life.

Post-White chronicles how both she and young Brennan confronted his cancer diagnosis in her memoir, Standing at Water’s Edge. She writes from different perspectives throughout the three-year ordeal of Brennan’s ALL journey. At times, her writing is strictly from a medical/scientific perspective, yet set out in language for the layperson, complex medical terms made easily understandable. And then Post-White writes purely from a mother’s heartfelt expression.

We feel her confusion, denial, and guilt in language such as this: “Where am I? Am I in a dream… Why did I allow his symptoms to drag on for so long?” The shock of the diagnosis itself in this statement: “Cancer was my job, my career. Cancer was supposed to happen to other people’s kids.”

Post-White provides ample backstory of how she wound up in her specialty field. With a history of mental illness and suicide in her immediate dispassionate family, at a young age she became accustomed to suppressing her feelings as events unfolded. She says of that time, “Although my mother tried, she had little experience with emotions. And typical of the 1950s and ’60s, my father, a stoic German, relied on her to handle anything regarding feelings. I didn’t know to expect anything else. I learned to squelch my feelings and to survive on my own.”

Perhaps this is why she chose her specialty field; she was accustomed to dealing with complex issues without expressing emotion, without equating the human emotional toll cancer weighs on the patient and their family. Post-White now had to deal with this new reality that had become all too personal. How she faced the seriousness of Brennan’s diagnosis, the often painful treatments and nauseating after-effects, are examined in depth—at times critical, often emotional, and always relatable as a concerned mother to a cherished child.

It seems that children affected with a life-threatening disease have an emotional maturity beyond their age. Brennan was no exception, and Post-White lovingly portrays him throughout her memoir. Brennan resorts to drawing pictures as a coping mechanism, and Post-White has posted them throughout the book, which adds a certain poignancy to this story. Brennan shared his fears about what he was facing through his art; his mother was feeling the depth of the meaning behind the pictures and this reader felt it as well.

Through observing firsthand her son’s approach and adaptation to living with cancer, Post-White comes to a deeper understanding and empathy toward others dealing with the disease. She says, “I wanted to know how people found hope and meaning in illness and how they adapted to and rearranged their lives to accommodate adversity. I wanted to delve into the mystery of the human facing off between life and death.”

Through her son’s brave stance at such a young age and resilient spirit to live, Post-White’s memoir comes off as a bold testament to the human spirit. She witnessed firsthand how her son himself faced off between life and death. This is a memoir that sticks with you. It is certainly worth the read.