It is impossible to talk about cancer without invoking another Big C: cliche. Illness and pain, “journeys” and “battles”, finding appreciation for life while reckoning with death – these are the building blocks of cancer stories, at once uniquely devastating and devastatingly common. The poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, romantic partners for over a decade, took divergent approaches to the Big C. As a writer and editor, Falley strived to “eradicate” cliche; Gibson, as Falley put it, would instead “double down”.
Diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer in their late 40s, Gibson, the poet laureate of Colorado thus chose to double down on mantras we often aspire to embody but forget to practice: live fully, laugh more, love harder. Savor it all. “This is the beginning of a nightmare, I thought … my worst fear come true,” they say early in the exquisite new documentary Come See Me in the Good Light. “But stay with me … because my story is about happiness being easier to find once we realize we do not have forever to find it.”
