If you want to make a difference in this world, go ahead and make a difference in someone’s life. Respond to your inner call on the occasion of World Rose Day 2022 celebrated on 22^nd September every year.

World Rose Day: “A single person can make a difference to many what many cannot bring to one.”

This adage serves or holds true to the life of 12-year Melinda Rose who dueled with Askin’s tumor (rare blood cancer) for more than 3 years before succumbing to it in 1996. In all these 3 years what did she do?

She wrote letters, poems and verses through emails and letters to thousands of cancer patients needing hope in the darkest of times.

Melinda changed the fate of many by altering their will and giving them hope every day.

Though the doctors gave her a few weeks she made it a few years and build a hope band around herself.

In memory of this valiant soul that found her inner peace in these four years, the world began celebrating World Rose Day to celebrate her life and commemorate her death.

How is World Rose Day significant?

Cancer is a menace and as people say, it’s a death sentence just not for the patient but for an entire family that lives through the darkest dooms every single day.

Having the disease is itself a deadly misfortune. Additionally, it’s equally impelling to know that most families that live after cancer suffer a kind of rejection hard to define in words. The stigma rests in the minds of the people who do not have cancer.

Those who survive cancer fight it or succumb to it versus people who have other diseases but no cancer. It can be crushing and while the forces come down heavily upon these families, they find solace in the void that was left in the family by the occurrence of a disease.

Ordinarily, we are not fighting a disease here but a mindset where one feels oppressed for having a disease others don’t have. It is rather again a fight between the haves and the have-nots. But in this way, we are not creating a happier world rather segregation, another abominable boundary that serves us no good. But, then humans love boundaries and segregation as it is their very nature to be small.

Even if a person is cured of cancer and released by doctors, the world never gives up on the stigma that serving a cancer patient will lead to cancer even in healthy individuals. Most people in our country believe it is the fruit of our action. Many also believe it does not need medical treatment but mere rest. Death is inevitable yet death from cancer is different from death from other diseases.

What should people do on this occasion?

Bring down the stigma and bring down the walls,
Gift a rose and give a card to make them feel tall.
Support the caregivers and support cancer patients in their falls.
It is just the fall in their seasons, make it a dignified fall.
Some live after a fall while others wither to go to the hall.
Take your heart out of the cages to respond to your inner call and celebrate World Rose Day.

Spreading the message and reducing this mental stigma is the only way to survive the disease wholesomely. Many more such days are perhaps needed to make the world more empathetic towards everyone who lives after cancer. No one can forget that everyone has a problem of their and so is this – a mere problem with a possible solution.

If you know anyone who suffered from the disease share your compassion by gifting a card, a rose and a gift. It need not be a lot but all you need is to show you care.

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