I am writing this in response to this latest blog entry by Snickollet. If you get a chance, read it and also follow the link to Kris Carr's website about her new book and film, Crazy Sexy Cancer. I can agree with Snickollet's discomfort with the whole thing. She fought a cancer battle with her husband and lost. Kris Carr is fighting her cancer battle with all of the anger, blame and fortitude she deserves. I am angry at cancer for both of them. I have no right to say anything else on the matter. My cancer has not yet been diagnosed, and I have not walked in those shoes. Yet.
This is where all of my friends/family roll their eyes and label me (again) as the pessimist, while I smile politely and label me (again) as the realist. If you live long enough in this world, you will find a cancer growing inside of you. The sad thing is, "living long" is now starting to apply to people in their 30's, like Snickolett's husband and Kris Carr. My educational background is in physiology. My research background is in cell biology. I have stared at textbook pages and research articles that only put out big words to explain the truth: We know nothing about the why, what and where of this disease. I have worked in a lab where I have grown stem cells in a dish and seen them turn to cancer cells before my eyes under a microscope.
I have just learned of a friend's cancer diagnosis.
A best friend's mother just died of cancer.
I have watched family die of cancer.
All of my current hospice patients are dying of cancer.
Cancer...right now it is all too much to mentally grasp.
Part of the reason that I am so involved in hospice is because I am concerned with the way we humans face and fear death. The death of a loved one is going to transform us no matter what, and hospice folks try their best to make it, well...whatever needs to be made. They watch and listen and provide comfort care for the dying and their loved ones.
Sure, sure...take your vitamins, drink bottled water, buy organic and get all huffy about it. But realize this: no human has left this Earth alive. If you are alive, you have a terminal disease. Say it aloud. Death, death, death...we are all going to die. This is the only thing we know for sure.
Do we have a right to mourn our dead? Yes, this is the healthiest thing we can do. Do we have a right to be lost without the one we lost? Yes, this is love. Angry? Yes, get angry. Sad? Yes, cry your eyes out every day if you need to. We all have a right to these emotions. We all feel our losses in different ways.
But please, please, readers don't get angry with what I am about to say. I have very few opinions about things because I am always trying to walk in other people's shoes, and I try to consider their circumstances. However...
These are the things that are nonnegotiable with me, now that I have accepted that I am terminal:
1. Forgive.
2. Laugh at yourself.
3. Rest.
I am not an expert on living and I am not trying to be didactic. Oh, trust me, most days I am incapable of #2 and #3, and that is where #1 comes in.
I am dying. I have a terminal disease called life. Say it, and go about your day.
When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
2 comments:
Great post.
I think it's important for people to remember that all of the mechanisms they have in place to prolong or make (we are always "making") are false, in a way. i say do what you fucking can with what you have each day and then let it be. it's about admitting that you don't have a hand in everything and can't possibly have control over every outcome.
the opinions and walking in other shoes in a whole other blog post! are some things just better? are some opinions just better? do we have to see things from other points of view? do we lose ourselves in trying to fold ourselves into other people?
It's wonderful that you do hospice work. John was under hospice care for less than a week, but the experience he and I had with hospice was very positive.
Your three "rules" are great. I'm pretty good at 1 and 2, but I need to watch out for #3. All too often, that's the one that slips through the cracks for me.
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