VANCOUVER, B.C. — It began like an ordinary day, until one of David Lee Kwen’s long-time customers revealed it was anything but. “I said, ‘Anita, what’s happening?’” David recalls. “She said, ‘I have cancer.’” “Then (David) put his arms around me and he hugged me,” Anita Roberts says. “My heart just fell,” David says. So, David invited Anita to the back of his grocery store and gave her all sorts of ingredients to make traditional remedies, for free. “Because we have to give back,” David explained. But David wasn’t done. He and his daughter also designed a poster for an online fundraiser in support of Anita, displaying them around the store and posting them all over the neighbourhood. “When he showed up in that really emotional way, it was an overwhelming sense of my heart opening,” Anita says. Anita says that along with taking David’s remedies, she was also feeling compelled to start dancing in unexpected ways. “I wasn’t just getting down to the music,” Anita says. Instead, Anita spent a couple hours each night expressing all the feelings that were just too big to be communicated through words. “I don’t even know why I’m doing it. It’s not like I have a woo-woo idea (that dancing will help with healing)” Anita says. “It’s just what started happening.” Her movements ranged from a rocking to comfort her sadness, pulling-out motions in all the places there was cancer, and punching the air to prepare herself for battle. “It was really allowing myself to feel like I could fight,” Anita says. After cancer treatments eventually made her body too weak to continue daily dancing at home, Anita found comfort in what David was doing back at the market. “The customers were amazing,” David says. “They all rallied around her.” “People who I had never heard of were donating,” Anita says. They collectively raised more than $30,000 so Anita’s husband Jeff could stay home from work to care for her. “I just felt so much gratitude,” Anita says, fighting back tears. Many months later, Anita returned to David’s market. “Anita came to me and said, ‘Dave, the doctor said I’m cancer free,” David smiles. “That’s amazing!” But if anyone mentions that David’s amazing, he’ll humbly suggests it’s just what one does. “Everybody should spread the love,” he smiles. A love that Anita says has not just helped her heal, but renewed her faith in humanity. “And it just made me feel the world is good,” Anita says before wiping away a grateful tear. “You know, people are good.”
