Thoughts, just for today
It’s hard, living this life. Cancer patient, cancer survivor, somewhere in between.
“Does it bother you when people tell you how well you’re doing?” he asks, knowing the answer.
“No one gets it. They see the outside. Not what’s going on in my head.”
“I get that. It’s a huge cross to bear. Even your own family members, I bet. It’s hard because you’re left feeling really alone. But what’s important is that you ARE doing well. You have to hold onto that.”
If you know anyone suffering with an illness, let me share these words. I tell you in confidence, you see, because this is coming from inside the institution of illness. Some come inside and visit, but the ones who stay have many secrets. And so my advice begins with telling you about some of them.
There are three crosses made of twisted metal and steel and wood, splintering into the backs of every patient. The first is “The body”. The Body is under attack, every moment of every day. It’s accepting or rejecting food and determining on its own how its host will feel at any given moment. It accepts and incorporates poison through infusions and turns blood into a toxic river, thundering through the body like a tsunami attacks the shoreline. It takes more than its fair share of beatings and routinely practices how to claw and scratch and strangle and kick and scream out in vengeance. So loud, sometimes, it feels like a league of pins poking the eyes and ears of those standing closest by. But none more pained than the person sitting in the blue treatment chair, hours upon hours a week.
“The Life” is the second cross. There is some humor to be found here, however ironically, because your person, your friend, your husband, is juggling 6 potatoes, a couple of donkeys and several hats while balancing on one foot and sometimes alternating feet depending on which one is less affected by the medication.
(for the reader, the potatoes are the people and things and daily tasks that must get done by him or her alone, as simple as a shower or folding laundry or as difficult as spending time with loved ones and showing up to life—a life made entirely of quicksand, situated squarely on the side of a cliff. The donkeys are the thoughtless boobs who refuse to accept this new reality and do nothing, if that, to lend an ear, or a hand, or a meal or even a magazine…The hats are the ones he or she must adorn each time the phone rings or the doorbell; am I doing well today? Do I need help today? Should I stay in bed and let the answering machine pick up or Leave the package at the door, I’ll get it later once I’ve crawled out of bed and picked the cracker crumbs from my robe, the one that covers the clothes I’ve been wearing for 4 days. Once I put on my wig. Or my hat or my scarf, whichever one gives me some sense of accomplishment.)
The third and final cross is “The Mind.” It’s a terrible thing to waste away, pulling and twisting and shoving thoughts around, disrupting perfectly beautiful emotions with twisted knots of death and dying, destruction and waste, chaos and vomit…She chokes on them as they force their way down into her throat, cutting off her windpipe and forcing her to her knees, gasping for breath, reaching up to the heavens for the clutch of an angel…Mental pictures of her past drip with tears of sorrow, her future completely out of grasp, too dark to catch even a glimpse of..begging for her life in vain…if this is God’s plan than all the begging in the world won’t do me any good but searching nonetheless under hatboxes and in drawers for a loophole, a reason, a prayer, a lesson that she can hold up and say Ah HA! I’ve heard you, I understand and I will persevere and in doing so will make my life more meaningful, more worthwhile, more to your divine liking, I swear…please spare my children from this horror, please I beg of you…her voice trails off into the wind, carried up to the heavens as a pale yellow balloon...
Her mind keeps her awake at night, scared pale that They will come to her in the night and so she paces the floor and checks on her children and sobs silently in the dark, legs curled under her feet on the toilet…thoughts of life and death play tug of war with her heart and it shreds and unfurls like strands of silk, falling delicately to her feet and she frantically bends over to scoop them all up, hoping she can stitch them back together and make something whole again, but they melt through her fingers and there she is….stretched out between life and death…
The Mind is Satan’s cross. And it’s a hell that only she knows.
So my advice to you, reader, friend, colleague, mother, brother, father…Take a deeper look at your loved one. Don’t presume that a nimble, healthy looking body, rosy cheeks and a smile means good health. Far from it. It simply means that The Body is not so heavy today. She’s still struggling, trying to claw her way out of quicksand. The Body is juggling…you caught her at a moment when the potatoes were all in balance.
“ So how does it make you feel when someone says ‘you look great’?”
“Pretty shitty actually. Because it gives most people an excuse to turn away and wash their hands of me. They didn’t see me this morning, see what I see every day. They didn’t see the ‘before’ picture without the makeup and hair..”
“Right. They think if you look well, you must be doing great. But you’re not. You never will be.”
“It makes it easier for them to let me blend into the background. ‘Doesn’t appear to be knocking at deaths door, so all must be well. Whew. Now I can get on with my day. But in fairness, it’s a shitty situation all around. Some genuinely do care and don’t know what to do. I can’t fault everyone for that. I just wish more people got it, you know?
“ I know. I really do know. Do you feel well enough for treatment today?”
“Of course I do. What choice to do I have?”
So the secret, my friend, is that cancer is like a clock…it sits on the second hand and spins round and round, moment after each passing moment. It doesn’t allow one to walk away, and if by some grace of God, she’s able to get out of bed and put on something other than pajamas, what you saw just now was blind will and determination. You saw the Body pulling it together, the Life stepping aside and the Mind on hold. You did not see cancer.
Show your love by seeing her and the iron grip she lives with. That’s where you will find the words.
