What does it mean to support another as they experience an event which is for us without referent? What does it mean to bear witness to affects which are irreducible to any signifiable or representable system? What sort of responsibility comes with this fidelity to the other? 

These fundamental questions about our relation to others pronounce that we are always already concerned about the conditions of possibility for the survival of the other. This possibility of care is the very possibility that grounds us in the world, that in being produced by others allows us to produce ourselves. Addressing the other is a matter governed, above all else, by material fragility and temporal finitude. In other words, our relation to others is marked by the threat of losing them in their absolute singularity. Every relation pronounces the possibility of a mourning to come. While this is an ostensibly melancholy notion, it is a profoundly freeing notion precisely because in recognizing the possibility of the loss of the other, we are able to more fully embrace the being of the other- to recognize the love which marks our relation to the other, to recognize the part of them within ourselves.  

Inhaling the blustery October air, the ochre leaves trailing my every step, I was inundated by fragmented visions of memory: the desolate halls, the infinite expanse of white, the oscillating green of the monitor that I had convinced myself would be endless, and, most of all, the pallid face of my grandfather whose gaze breathed out in blank exhaustion. In these scenes of ineffable pain, I witness myself as the witness. I am not myself nor am I any other- I watch as though on a spectral plane, feeling just as powerless as I had been then having to say goodbye. Sighing at the threat of tears, I gazed at the vast expanse of people around me. I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by survivors and witnesses, by strength and hope, by remembrance and celebration. Suddenly, I began to remember who my grandfather was and not the diagnosis which would ultimately take his life- his kindness, his warmth, his dedication to others, his knowledge, and the measureless importance he had and continues to have in my life along with the realization that I will always carry his memory with me- he will always be here. Having the opportunity to participate in this gathering, to speak with survivors, to support those who are fighting cancer as well as those who are still experiencing the effects of cancer in their everyday lives was unspeakably important for me. There is nothing more extraordinary than the infinite love and care that one community can contain.