My boyfriend and I were planning a trip to Mexico last summer, a few months after my mastectomy.  As we were studying the map, he pointed out a faint horizontal line that ran across Mexico. 

“Is that the Tropic of Cancer or Capricorn?” he wondered out loud.

“Tropic of Cancer,” I said with certainty, noting that it was the line above the equator.

“How do you know?” he asked

I told him that I’d come up with a mnemonic in 9th grade geography class: the Tropic of Cancer was the line north of the equator because people who had cancer died and went UP to heaven. 

Little did I know then, at age 14, what role cancer would play in my life.  And little did I know how unfair it was to assume that everyone who was diagnosed with cancer would die of it.  But hey, I was only 14, and it did help me remember which Tropic was which.