By Bob Chrisman
An old friend called on her way back home from a weekend with her partner, son, and grandson. “I have some bad news and some good news. Which do you want to hear first?”
“Let’s get the bad news out of the way. Maybe the good news will soften the bad.”
“I didn’t expect you to say that. Here goes. The doctor found that I have endometrial cancer, undifferentiated. They have caught it at a very early stage.”
I stopped listening to her for awhile. The “C” word causes my stomach to clinch and the muscles in my neck to tighten. I’ve heard it too often in conversations with my women friends. Lost two of them to aggressive tumors that spread throughout their bodies.
But I focus too much on the losses and not on the wins. A friend diagnosed with breast cancer has remained cancer-free for 12 years. Other women have recovered completely from cancer of various organs. I’m thankful for those successes, very grateful.
My mind returns to the recurrences I’ve seen. A woman twelve years post treatment for a brain tumor has learned within the last two weeks that her cancer has returned. This time the doctor said she will die, but that’s what he said the last time and she lived for another twelve years.
Why all this focus on death at a time of year when the world screams with life and beauty? Why must death occur during these spring months when the earth bursts forth in new life and beautiful shades of yellow-green, when flowers of all colors open and scent the air, and when we can say, “Winter is gone for at least seven months”? Why?
Maybe all this life and beauty replaces the darkness and depression of the winter and I want no more of it. Give me life in all of its forms and beauty. I suffer enough during the winter and I’m over it, but I’m not, it seems.
I notice the beauty and revel in it because I know the bleakness of winter. Joy returns to my life because I know that the good times may not last forever. The friends I carry in my heart as the treasures of a lifetime will die. I must rejoice in their being while they are with me and not put that off for a change in the season or the approach of death.
How is it that the richness of life requires us to know the poverty of despairing times? Does it work like salt on cantaloup or watermelon? The saltiness makes the sweetness that much sweeter as death makes life more precious.
If I could stop death and dying, would I? No, I would let things happen as they must. I might even bring death to those I love earlier if they desired it, but that’s not my place in life. Sitting next to the bedside of a friend who’s dying makes me aware of the value of the time we had together and what a loss their death will be. If they must die (and they must), I can spend the final days and hours with them and carry them and those times in my heart until I pass from this earth.
NOTE: WRITING TOPIC — DEATH & DYING is the latest Writing Topic on red Ravine. Frequent guest writer Bob Chrisman joined QuoinMonkey in doing a Writing Practice on the topic.
I know that today is your birthday, Bob. Happy Birthday, dear friend.
As you know, I’ve been looking at the impending death of beloveds up close and personal. It seems as though the world has not been screaming life and beauty this spring, but I am glad to be reminded of it here in your thought-filled words.
Some wisdom I recently obtained from a dying beloved: “There is so much beauty in not knowing.”
There is so much beauty in not knowing.
I know we must all die, but I hope you don’t die any time soon.
LikeLike
Flann, thanks for the birthday wish.
A wonderful beauty exists in not knowing when I will die. Even people who are diagnosed as terminally ill don’t know when they will breathe their last. For me that makes each moment I’m alive even more precious.
The earth has been screaming life and beauty this spring, my dear friend. You haven’t been in the frame of mind to see it amid all the people you know who are dying. As your friend said, “There is so much beauty in not knowing.” Beauty always surrounds us if we can see it. I can’t always see it, but I’m working on it.
LikeLike
It is a great gift when others see that beauty for us and name it.
Thanks for naming it.
LikeLike
Bob,
I enjoyed your story. You did a great job of showing the beauty in something most people would consider ugly.
Great writing!
T.
LikeLike
Dear Bob,
I find I must fight a tendency in myself to avoid those that I know I am losing to death. I think it’s one of the many ways I try to control death, but it’s silly. Avoiding them only kills them off before they’re dead, and then I have that regret on top of all the others when I might have had the joy and pain of accompanying them in their final days. So I don’t do it anymore.
Another way I try to control death is with my regrets and guilt. All these things take me away from the true nature of what I had with my loved ones. Maybe the fear of death is imprinted into our bones, so that we don’t head there willy-nilly before we’ve had a chance to experience what life has to offer. But that fear can interfere with our willingness and ability to truly be with those who are dying before we are. And then we have to let them go.
It’s hard to let them go. I tried out atheism a whole year after my Dad died because I didn’t want to let him go. During his life atheism and agnosticism was a topic he explored in great depth, and there were many conversations we didn’t get to have about that during his life. I think trying out atheism was my way of hanging onto him for awhile after he died. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, I flunked atheism because of a constant undercurrent of prayer and a dream.
Some months after he died, I dreamt my Dad and I were dancing in a great ballroom and he was singing our song in my ear. “Casey would waltz with the strawberry blond while the band played on….” I still remember how disappointed I was as a child when I found out I was a brunette, not a strawberry blond. In my dream, it became time for him to go so I asked him, “So Dad! Is there a God?” He turned back to me, his face lit up with all the excitement he ever expressed on this earth about science, math, or engineering and said “Yes! I was asking the wrong questions.”
LikeLike
Bob – I’m sorry you have to experience yet another friend with cancer. It’s happening more and more often with my friends, too, although all have survived so far. I guess it’s part of aging but I don’t like it one bit.
I admire how good a friend you have been for your dying friends. I am awkward with the big C, still. Getting better with practice but it still scares me enough that my impulse is to run away from people who have it. I don’t. I can’t. But I want to.
Susyc- thank you for sharing your dream. It really spoke to me. I saw a healer a few weeks after my Dad died. He had died struggling and angry and I wasn’t at peace about his going. This healing woman put her hands on her body and said, “I don’t usually do this- being a channel for the dead – but your Dad really wants to tell you something.” She was quiet for awhile, with closed eyes. Then she smiled and said, “wow, he’s having a good time. He’ says there’s so much he didn’t understand before and now he does. He’s going to stick around awhile to help one of your kids who he says is going to need him. Then he’ll pass on.”
I am an atheist. My brain doesn’t accept the notion of an afterlife but I gotta say, this message gave me great peace. And I knew exactly which kid he meant: the one most like himself, my math prodigy son, who did, indeed, need all the help he cold get.
LikeLike
What a beautiful last sentence, Bob, and how beautiful you are to sit with the dying and carrying their memory forward.
LikeLike
Susyc, thanks for sharing you experience and that dream. I don’t believe in God as most people I know think of God. I’m a non-theist who believes that life never ceases to exist as much as it transforms into other things.
The dream was a beautiful one. I wish we knew what the wrong question was that he asked. Do you know?
One thing I’ve found in being with the dying is to let them lead the way. If they want to talk about what’s happenind then I’ll listen. If they don’t, we’ll talk about other things.
One friend complained to me that her friends didn’t want to hear what she had to say about her death process. They wanted her to fight her cancer (although she had for 2 long, painful years). They could not listen to her talk of death.
We had known each other for years, but only became close friends toward the end of her life. She said, “I can talk to you about my death and you don’t try to talk me out of it. You listen. You don’t know how important it is to listen to a dying person talk about their death and give them the joy of knowing that someone will listen and hear. Thank you.”
LikeLike
Jude, we’ve had many conversations about our spiritual beliefs. To think we can understand death or what happens after makes me smile. So much we will never understand until we are there ourselves.
Sounds like your dad did a great job looking after your son, and you have also done an outstanding job of being his mom.
LikeLike
The dying people I’ve known have taught me so much about life and living and dying. I bow deeply to all of them for those gifts.
LikeLike
First of all, happy birthday! Your piece is a gift and stunning in its directness, simplicity and truth. I just saw a movie called Departures about this very theme which I highly recommend! Its’ about facing death and grief in the face and how to walk with people through this liminal time in life.
Those friends I have lost taught me to live up until the very last second…and to include the ones you love in as many ways as possible.
Its a privilege, all of it Bob. Thanks.
LikeLike
Bob,
This post reminds of what Natalie Goldberg talks about–holding opposing realities simultaneously…in this case, death and life…winter and non-winter…people with cancer and people who keep living on. I want it to be one or the other but it isn’t.
You’ve reminded me it’s both. Always both.
LikeLike
Dear Bob, It is so interesting that in my dream my dad said, “I was asking the wrong questions!” I don’t really know what his “wrong questions” were. I wonder what the “right” questions would have been for him. I do know that he struggled with all kinds of things in his life: alcoholism, relationships with his mother and women in general, religious fundamentalism, intellectualism, emotions, etc…..I do know that having him in hospice in my house at the end of his life was a culmination of a forgiveness I had worked toward for him all my life, and that it was my opportunity to take it (my forgiveness) out of my head and heart and put it into action with my hands and feet. I like to think he left this world finally understanding what unconditional love feels like.
LikeLike
susyc, what a great gift to give someone: unconditional love.
Laura, hope your living is going well. It is a privilege.
Teri, sometimes I see things in opposites, but more and more I realize no absolutes exist in the real world. Maybe they do in some other place, but not here.
LikeLike
Bob, thanks so much for letting me know about this post. As always, it is thoughtful and poignantly written.
It reminds me that I had recently shared a poem from Writer’s Almanac (End of Days by Marge Piercy) and was “set back on my heels” by my husband’s reply – he agreed with the poem’s sentiments, and how sad he felt at the speed of the days flying by, how death is approaching so quickly (he’s just 50!). His response surprised me – I agreed with the poet in wanting to have someone there if I can’t speak my mind to help put me out of my misery, just like we do with our beloved animals. But I rarely, if ever, live with the thought of being on death’s door. More like that famous line from Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – miles to go before I sleep. I guess perhaps it’s all shades of grey, all part of a circle.
My favorite is that last paragraph. Perfect.
LikeLike
See Terri, your post did come through. Thanks for stopping by, reading and commenting.
LikeLike
Bob, thanks for writing with me on this Topic. I realized after I posted it that it was hard for some to think about and write about. For some, it’s just too close to a current experience. I can only relate in some of the emotions I felt when I thought my brother was going to die last year. Very strange ups and downs. Trying to be present, but struggling with the implications of the end of life tasks we were doing at that time.
I am so touched by what readers shared here about their experiences and dreams after losing a loved one. I have been fortunate not to lose a parent yet, but I know it’s going to be one of the hardest things I ever go through. I’m buoyed up by others experiences — they have come out the other side.
LikeLike
Happy belated birthday, Bob. Hope you reveled in your beautiful spring. We’ve had a temperamental spring here, tho I guess that’s what spring is all about.
Also a tough spring thus far. I lost my mother-in-law. Some days I’ll realize she’s just not there. We used to have long phone conversations. She hated the term “mother-in-law” and she was so good about trying to be better than the term. Which she was. I adored her. But she taught me so much about dying with dignity and without fear. I will forever be grateful for that gift. Experiencing her death does soothe me when I think of my own, whenever it should come.
Thanks for sharing. You’ve opened up a conversation that resonates with many.
LikeLike
QM, this topic has been a part of my life for several years now with the deaths of some major figures in my life, the last one a year ago when a dear, long-time friend died right before Xmas.
As you noted, the death process of others impacts us all because we must face our own inevitable death. That accounts for how many people turn away and refuse to talk about it or try to deny the dying person a chance to talk about it.
Roma (yb) thanks for the birthday wishes. Spring here has endured because of the cold rainy weather we’ve had with periods of bright, warm days. The fresh, vibrant greens with the lavender lilacs, the red and yellow tulips, the brilliant white of the Stars of Bethlehem and other spring flowers makes even the gray, cloudy skies tolerable.
My sympathies to you and your family on the death of your mother-in-law. The dying can teach us all about how to live our lives.
LikeLike
[…] Chrisman, excerpt from a 2011 Writing Practice on the WRITING TOPIC — DEATH & […]
LikeLike