Last night, I had to return to New York from San Francisco. Unfortunately, this was on the eve of an even more brutal round of treatments my sister will have to face starting next week. Key words: Fletcher Suit, Brachytherapy, Two More Weeks of Chemo, Surgery.
I will be out there again as soon as I can. Certainly by the time her surgery rolls around.
I'm exhausted. My apartment is a wreck, but it's a freshly painted wreck so there is always... well, a moment of joy to be found.
Leaving is always hard. Not being home is hard. It's all hard.
This morning, I wrote to my sister in email:
So I was telling someone this morning that having to stand by and watch you go through this whole mess is a bit like having a loved one in one of Saddam Hussein's torture prisons. All that the rest of us can do, really, is stand outside the walls of your prison and just keep hoping The Prisoner keeps finding a way to get through each day of torture.
How *do* they do that? How do they survive the torment, and the despair, and the not-knowing what the future holds, and all the rest of it?
I can only think they must keep telling themselves that there is a purpose to finding a way to survive each day. How the hell else could they do it? They have to keep telling themselves, someday this will be over, someday they will be free of this absurd and (seemingly) pointless suffering. They have to keep thinking to themselves... "I will survive today so that someday I can experience joy again."
They have to get through it by remembering all the moments of joy they've felt in their lives. They have to keep telling themselves, yeah, that's why being alive is good. Those moments of pure joy. This suffering will pass. This absurd torment. I will get through it because on the other side of it is the promise of experiencing joy again.
So maybe that's how you get through the next few weeks? Just keep telling yourself, as each moment of suffering comes and goes, "There is a purpose to surviving this. This hell is worth surviving."
You know me. I am not a great one for believing in Cosmic Purpose. I don't think you got cancer For A Purpose. I think you got cancer because you got cancer. The End. I do not in any sense whatsoever believe that the Purpose of Your Suffering is to make you a Stronger Person. That, to me, is unmitigated bullshit, though I certainly acknowledge the right of other people to think that.
However, like those prisoners who survived Saddam Hussein's houses of horrors, I *do* think it is possible to survive the agony and torment by constantly reminding yourself, "There *is* a purpose... not so much to this suffering, but to the surviving of it." It has to be lived through because it has to be lived through, but not just for the sake of living through it.
Remember your moments of joy. Long for more of them. Long for as many more of them as you can get. I've seen you take joy in the little sweetnesses of Stretch and the little self-important sillinesses of Raymond. There is, at least in my opinion, no great over-arching Meaning of Life. The meaning of life, in my view, is the slow but steady accumulation of moments of joy, big and small, moments of the life-changing variety or just the mood changing sort. They all amount to something worthwhile. They all are worth living for.
Maybe make a list of your best moments of joy? Maybe add to it a list of things that feel like they might give you joy in the future? In the midst of your suffering, think about those moments. Think: this is not purposeless suffering. This is suffering so I can live to have or re-have this-or-that moment of joy.
When you get through this, I think I can guarantee you that your definition of joy will have changed. I don't know how. I can't say in what way the concept of joy will have changed for you, but I feel certain it will have. I also think that when you get through this, you will experience a kind of freedom you may never have felt before in your life. You will experience the contentment that comes with a fundamental liberation from all things petty and unimportant.
By surviving all this suffering, not only will you have proven that you are, as we say here in New York, One Tough Broad, you will have transformed yourself into a person the likes of which you might not even be able to imagine quite yet. Who knows what kind of person waits for you on the other side of all this?
Look forward with curiosity and anticipation and maybe even some awe at who that person will be. We can make guesses and estimates and have theories about how that person might turn out, but we won't really know until she shows up on the far side of all this. There are some futures that cannot be accurately imagined. They can only be arrived at on the other side of whatever it is we have to go through to get to them.
Moment by moment, try not to dwell on the terrible suffering. Try to dwell on the purpose in you doing what you need to do to survive it. Take your mind, by acts of pure will if you must, to the moments of joy you have had in your life, and to the moments of joy that still await you.
I know you can do it. All of us standing forlornly outside your prison's walls know you can. An entirely new L*n* B** W*h*lt awaits you on the other side of this... one where you can not only pick and choose what parts of the old L*n* you want to keep, but also welcome with open arms new and wondrous things about yourself you can't even imagine right now.
One of these days, you will be let out of this hell. One of these days, you will walk out through the gates of this terrible prison and will walk into an entirely new life.
There is a purpose to surviving every tiny moment of this hell. Defeat every tiny moment of suffering by remembering, or imagining, a slightly bigger moment of joy.
You can do it.
Love you so much,/Mike
She replied that she has started making her lists.
Comments