Ways to Love, Not Fight
Cancer
by Elizabeth Holding
Cancer-the very word scares most of us. It makes victims of the innocent without meaning, without warning, without cause. It strikes at the person and the punch is too often deadly. Its blow consumes not only the life of the victim but also those around that person. So often the victims and their families speak of fighting the disease. There is much talk of a valiant battle as if a knight is standing in front of a dragon whose fiery breath engulfs all that it sees.
I have felt those feelings for the past ten years as my life has been filled with cancer. That experience was not my own body's cancer, but instead it was in the bodies of those I love. As I watched it consume my father, my mother and then my sister, I felt an intense anger at the injustice of this horror they were experiencing. I channeled my fiery passion to fight this disease as if I were on horseback charging into battle with sword raised to help them defeat this monster. Yet the war was lost before I had even begun to fight.
As I walked through the valley of death with each of them, I began to realize that the metaphors of "battle" and "war" were damaging to my soul. As I fought the cancer, I was also fighting those I loved. As I recognized that there was a possible inherited connection to this disease, I realized that I was fighting and possibly destroying myself in the battle. I began to ask myself how I could love these cancers. What did these experiences give me that helped me understand the people, not the disease? If I were not careful, it was possible to let the cancer rob me of the people whom I love the most and who had this dread disease.
My father had lymphoma that metastasized into his brain. He was the sage of the family, the one everyone came to for advice. My grandparents had depended on him and so had my mother's six sisters and their husbands. He could reduce a problem to its elements and see a number of workable solutions. He refused to choose among these solutions. He understood that he could offer information, but he could not choose for someone else what to do. He carried a strong sense of right and helped others see that in themselves. It seemed so tragic that the essence of this man-his vision and brilliance was taken at the time that we needed it the most.
Dad's brain cancer did not last long-just a few months. He was so sick that we had him cared for in a nursing home. I found that I could not stay away. I wanted to see him as much as I could. My husband and young family would bring me to his downstate Illinois community every two or three weeks so I could sit with him. Finally I just stayed with my mother and saw him daily. I needed to be with him and understand what was happening. There was such peace in his room. He was smiling. He was so kind and gentle to the nurses and those around him. One day I was there as the nurse was changing his bed and she said that the essence of someone comes out in these disabling diseases. I was able to see the man stripped of that which I thought was most important-his intelligence. Instead I saw the dignity of caring and the grace of simple kindness. Cancer gave me this gift. I had glimpsed into the soul of my father before he died.
My mother had breast cancer that had metastasized into the vertebrae of her back. She was a strikingly beautiful woman who was always stylishly dressed. As a child I remember her floating into a room with her dress flowing around her. At my sister's college parent weekend, she wore an Oscar de la Renta dress. She was stunning and I realize now how unusual this was for the small town of 250 in which I was raised. She wore that dress for more than twenty years and I still see her sense of womanhood and strong carriage as moved through a party in that dress. Of course the cancer took her carriage and attempted to take her womanhood.
I cared for Mom in my home. She lay on her bed and we came to her. Her bald head hidden under a stylish wig, her 80-pound frame covered with comfy sweaters and slacks-she took on a new style. I saw a woman lose what she thought had defined her and look further for what is there. She could not do much that year she lay on that bed, but she could be presence in the house for my ten-year-old son. Because she was there, he did not need to go to day care after school. He got to bring home his friends from school. It was a wonderful gift for my son. He and his grandmother formed an unusually close bond. He would come home and eat a snack with her. Then he would play and do homework. After dinner he and Mom would watch Wheel of Fortune and try to figure out the phrases. I can still hear their laughter. As I was losing my mother, she helped me mother those I love the most.
I hated that cancer that took her, but I love the woman who had that cancer and must therefore also love that cancer. Hate and love are so close. One is really the reflection of the other.
My sister's breast cancer came the year after Mom died. I do not think that either Sue, my sister, or I could believe that this was really happening. Three times she had biopsies and three times they were negative. Still her breast was green and warm. The physician suggested that she get another opinion at a different hospital and eight months later I finally convinced her that she should. By that time, it was too late. The cancer had spread and no amount of treatment could stop it although it did give her an additional eighteen months of symptom free time.
She had so much trouble accepting that this was happening. To fight the disease was to fight Sue. It only intensified her anger and rage at the injustice of this situation. She also became so frightened at leaving us all-those whom she loved. At the time that she told me of this fear, I told her how scared I was at being left alone here. She and Mom and Dad were all gone and I did not want to be where they were not. We both cried for what was and what could not be. In that moment I experienced the love of Sue and her cancer. The summer after her death I had so many dreams of her. It was as if she were still talking to me. Then one night my mother came to me and told me that everything was fine. She and Dad were with Sue. I never heard from them again in my dreams although their love continues to sustain me as I move forward in my life.
It seemed as if all of these cancer experiences were preparing me for my last one with my son. Since he was a senior boy preparing to go off to college I was scared as I thought about how young and unsure he seemed to me. I wondered what I could do to help him. It was the first weekend in February of his senior year when he had aggressive stomach flu, so bad that we took him to the emergency room that Friday because he could not stop throwing up. The medication controlled the nausea and we returned home. He was sick the next day, mainly in pain and could not eat anything. That Saturday evening he and I returned to the hospital and my husband went home to rest after dropping us at the emergency entrance since he had been working that Saturday. Nate probably had had stomach flu, but the pain was not from that. Instead I called my husband early Sunday morning to tell him that our son had testicular cancer that had metastasized to his lymph system.
The doctors assured us that he could be cured. This type of cancer even in advanced stages was curable. There was a remarkable protocol that worked in more than 90% of the cases unless there was teratoma. Unfortunately there was teratoma present in the testacies, but only 5%. Hopefully it had not spread since the lymph tumors were too large to remove immediately. Instead he had four rounds of chemotherapy to shrink the tumors and then they were removed in a second surgery.
During Nate's chemotherapy, I went into the darkness of the cancer. I feared the worst and wondered how I could accept the loss of my son. I railed against God and wondered how such a thing could happen. During this time I read Bruce Feiler's book Abraham and then went to the Bible to read about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son. I marveled at how Abraham could trust God so much that he could give him his son. At that moment I knew that I must also give Nathan to God. That divine love would sustain him and me in whatever we had to do. I could give him up if had to do so and I could go on with my life. It was possible. Love would sustain us. In giving him up, I also found him. Nate's cancer was cured. Through seeing the need for love and its power I saw his healing and my own. I realized that to fight the cancer was to fight divine Love and all that it could and would bring into my life. Instead I needed to love the essence of my son and see him doing God's work, not my own.
I try not to use the metaphors of fighting and war in talking about cancer. I see that as a destructive force that only supports the cancer. Instead I see how important it is to love all of ourselves including the cancer that plagues our culture now. Love's powerful force can lift us up out of cancer's ravages and free us to see ourselves in new and miraculous ways.
I wrote this poem about my son's experience with cancer. It captures my love for him, myself, and my heritage in and out of cancer.
Covered by the Blue Blanket |
© 2005 Elizabeth Holding, Illinois. All rights reserved. Used with permission.