It's one of those of driving off a cliff moments. It's a statement you never expect so you never plan. Birth, marriage and even death carry stock responses stored in the brain for years in expectation they will one day be used. But even the most careful planner spends no time pondering what to say when a loved one tells you they have cancer.
It can come in the morning. It can come in the middle of the day. It can come at night. With no doubt, it will come when you are performing some mundane task which will suddenly have no significance. It can even come as you search for a particular restaurant that will satisfy a sudden craving for a particular type of pizza. Suddenly, the phone rings and you are hit with the most unexpected of utterances. Do you say good luck? Do you ask what you can do? Do you tamp down the sudden dread in order to say everything will be okay? If you are driving, do you pull to the side of the road? Do you stay strong because the person needs the support or do you simply begin to sob? As the surface areas of the brain struggle for the appropriate reaction, deep within, the internal voice whispers that no matter what you say, life has changed irrevocably.
Thoughts of a certain need for a specific type of pizza are immediately deleted from the queue and the most basic portions of the lizard brain sieze control of the body forcing it to attend to the need for sustenanace and nothing more. You find yourself robotically pulling into a drive through to order a pre-packaged meal of questionable value but infinite ease. The body knows food is a necessity but at this particular moment no longer a luxury to enjoy. It may have the taste of the cardboard of its packaging but it moves the body forward while the brain catches up.
Eventually, most people come around to one universal response. I'll be there as soon as I can.
Despite the cameras, the press gaggle, the harsh lights, the sputteringly inconsistent microphones, despite the differences in station of life, I was there with John and Elizabeth Edwards yesterday as they announced her cancer has returned. It is not hard for me to imagine the previous 24 hours. People often morbidly joke about the stages of grief but few understand cancer is the grief that arrives too early. There is despair. There is hope. There is the clinical analysis. There is the need to know exactly what is happening. There is the need to know exactly what is going to happen. Each on their own find the small corner of mind containing the mechanism of self-defense that allows the life to go on even when life seems impossible.
In the end all find hope. Even if it is the smallest whisper, we all put on the "brave face" and move forward. We face our family. We face our friends. In the case of public figures, we face the unwavering stare of the press.
I do not pray, but I do believe all souls are connected in ways we may never understand. Time and space hold no bounds to the power of human need.
I was not in Chapel Hill yesterday, but I was with John and Elizabeth Edwards.
7 comments:
Beautifully done.
Thanks James. We all needed that. A masterpiece.
That was perfect.
As the Edwards were being very strong and courageous and brave, for us really, and making their announcement, my friend and neighbor Jenna was in surgery for cancer. I'd been with her the afternoon before. I brought her some of her favorite flowers. I listened as she talked and cried and talked some more. For once I couldn't think of anything to say. Words just crashed around hollow and stupid and useless and unformed in my head, then just faded into oblivion.
So I just kinda sat there at the kitchen table. We sang some Lucinda and Glen Gampbell songs along with the CD player. I blogged a little bit about it. I went online and bought her a "Fuck Cancer" tee shirt at CafePress. One for me too.
I think about that arriving in the mail, wearing that for her. For me really. If I don't think of something, anything, to do to keep us all "busy" about this, I start crying too. I've had to pull the car over a couple of times now already.
I can't believe this wave of... well everything... that's come over my close-knit little moms' neighborhood posse. We tell the kids Jenna "has allergies." I am mostly dazed and lost in a haze. Jenna sounded really good on the phone today.
Molly, another posse mom, is deep into really annoying High Martha Stewart mode, organizing everything in her path: dinners for the family, housekeeper service, childcare. I just kinda wander around for the most part. I want to slap Molly for all her incessant do-gooder ways. Can't she just sit down for a moment and feel this with us? That's how irritable this cancer thing has made me.
And I don't even have it.
We might as well though, it seems. I now feel it's lurking everywhere, like some kinda bio-stalker just waiting to get me in the middle of the night while I'm sleeping, or in the shower. I feel totally exposed and vulnerable. I want a gun under the bed to shoot this cancer thing if it breaks in.
I do pray. A lot. I want it to mean something. But mostly I just want it to do something, to protect Jenna somehow. To just please, whatever it is we can do God, God-Her, just don't leave those little girls of Jenna's to fend for themselves in this kinda world without a mom. It's a prayer like I've never prayed before, other than the time my own child was in surgery at Childrens', and the time Jenna's child was in surgery at Childrens', and the time...
This is life. Straight-up and dirty and as hard and cold as a diamond. As beautiful too. And it's up to us to live it. We really have no other choice but to be strong for others, that they, like the Edwards, can be strong for us too... with every breath we are able to take.
Interesting piece on how Katie Couric went after this:
http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=8E9970DE-E0C3-F08F-9BDA7979B88D40A0
Yes, I read that. And I completely and utterly disagree with Sirota. And it's screed's like this that piss me off. Both sides play the game of accusing journalists of being all kinds of vile creatures because of the way they ply their trade. I watched the interview and yes it was a tough one. But that's what journalist are paid to do. Ask the tough questions. Whether they fit your agenda or not. In a case like this Sirota is no better than Limbaugh or Hannity when they accuse the MSM of a bias for not reporting about whatever little pet right wing tidbit is floating around at the moment.
I enjoyed this post very much...it really tugged at my heart. I've had that phone call before----an hour and a half before my mother died of pancreatic cancer. She'd been in a nursing home for along time and we had no idea.
I'm glad Mel included it in the Georgia Carnival.
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