No, Not Really.

It’s been a crazy year for some fatties ’round this here parts. I have been silently (or not so silently) suffering the death of a loved one to pancreatic cancer. I sat in the hospice surrounded by family as she suffered her last pieces of life on earth and listened to her choking death.

I cried a lot.

The funny thing about her death was not so much the way it happened or how long it took to claim her life but rather the way her body changed as a result. Always a fat child/teenager she lost weight as a young adult. she was an inbetweenie for a while and everyone applauded her. After 3 children she was thinner than she had ever been and was feeling pretty happy with her body.

Except that that’s when the cancer was figured out. Her rapid weight loss and ‘trim’ figure were the result of a cancerous tumor and an aggressive illness ravaging every single one of her organs and blood cells. She couldn’t hold nutrition in or around her.

As with any aggressive cancer treatment, she lost her hair and her strength. She also lost what was left of her size. Dying at under 95 pounds, she was finally as thin as she had ever wanted to be.

At her wake, loved ones were heard saying that at least she can now sit and watch from heaven with the thin *healthy* body that she never had. Bitterly, I noted that she had been quite thin for quite some time. Teary eyes reminded me that she was too sick to enjoy it. In fact she was healthiest when she was largest.

I’ve struggled with that knowledge. As I read more and more obesity epidemic propaganda I battle my own demons and those of my dearly dead.

She was healthiest when she was fat. She could enjoy life and her family when she was fat.

Now that’s a commercial you won’t see on television any time soon.

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