This Message Has Not Been Sent
This Life is Real series has generated more readers and responses than I would have ever imagined.
Many of those responses are posted to the Oklahoman’s website, for the whole world to see. But many others come to me personally, through my website, email, or facebook account. And some come to me via snail mail, telephone or face-to-face meetings.
Some readers tell me about the loss of their spouse or child or parent. Others tell me about their stage IV cancer, their struggles with chemo or radiation, or their difficulties as a caretaker. Complete strangers tell me that they are praying for me or send me some home remedy that they claim will help my condition. Some tell me how they found the site during the wee hours of the morning and then read all postings in one sitting. Old friends write to say hi and cheer me on.
At times the responses are about something I’ve written. Someone identified with this or that blog entry for some particular reason. Or someone had a different experience relating to the subject at hand. Others just want to say thanks for speaking about things that made them feel as if they are not alone. Some, of course, disagree with a point I’ve made or position I’ve taken.
Just this week I’ve heard from a woman whose daughter died in the OKC bombing, a pastor who has been laughing through some of my crazy experiences, someone who lost a dear friend to colon cancer, a doctor offering an experimental therapy for free, a book club that has been using my memoir in a study, and a mother who asked me to seek out her daughter in the afterlife, so I could tell the daughter how much she was loved.
These responses are worth their weight in gold. They humble me. They make me cry. They help me believe that I have something worthwhile to offer this world and that the attending difficulties of this series are something I can endure or work through.
Of course, there are the other letters too. The ones that make me shake my head or wince. And occasionally the ones that make my blood boil.
During my days in church, one of the concepts frequently used was the “spiritual disciplines.” For example, there were the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditating, serving others, giving, and demonstrating faith, to name just a few.
But I’ve discovered another spiritual discipline during the course of this series: the spiritual discipline of writing that letter you really, really want to write, indeed need to write, to that person who has said something hurtful, but then deleting the letter, no matter how good it might feel to press the send button.
This spiritual discipline comes in handy when somebody accuses me of not “being right” with God, proposes some long-shot home remedy that doctors don’t want us to know about, or takes a below-the-belt shot at me.
Most of the time I just shake it off, because I’ve gotten used to hearing from these occasional crazies. But sometimes they get to me, and I find myself stewing for much longer than I should.
When this happens, I’ve found that the best thing to do is to go ahead and write the response letter I want to write.
“Dear Mr. K, do me a favor and find some other dying man to send mean, self-aborbed, holier-than-thou letters to. I could do without your help.”
“Dear Ms. A, thank you for your armchair psycho-analysis. I wasn’t aware you had training in this area.”
“Dear Mr. J, congratulations on discovering the cure to every cancer known to man! And to think it was right there in my kitchen the whole time. The irony! You should be careful though. The doctors and hospitals probably have people watching you.”
After that, I read over the letter and spend a few pleasant moments contemplating how much fun it would be to watch the would-be recipient read the letter.
And then I press delete, feeling much, much better.
The Current Plan – Revised & Revised Again
Nothing’s ever easy, it seems.
My current plan, as described in my last post, was to fly to Houston next Monday, get tests done, then fly out that same day and have them call me with the results. Well, M.D. Anderson said no to that plan. They don’t do CT scans without a follow-up visit with an oncologist. I asked for an exception. After all, I’ve been going there for eight years. But they said it was hospital policy.
I’m not griping. As a lawyer, I’m sure it’s some legal policy, or perhaps a business decision made long ago. But regardless, it complicates my already already overly complicated life. For I’m having a shaky week due to chemo. Then, once I recover, it will be three days in Houston for tests and getting “the news.” Then it’s back home with a strong possibility of chemo the next week.
That’s almost three weeks out of commission!
Meanwhile, it’s crunch time around here. My wife is doing testing for her students at school. Maddye’s 18th birthday is this week, and we’ve also got prom and senioritis to maneuver around. Ford is playing at the Norman Music Festival, so there are practices all the time. And the kids have a lot of homework.
Anyway, MD Anderson agreed to move my tests to Tuesday, rather than Monday, making it two days away rather than three. But they gave me this news as I was having chemo, and I couldn’t speak to my wife about it until later on that night. By the time we’d discussed it, decided she would join me, and changed my flights, that Tuesday appointment slot was gone.
So it’s back to three days away. I’ll leave Monday and have tests. LeAnn will fly out on Tuesday. We’ll both see the doctor on Wednesday, then fly back.
Oh yeah, by the time I switched my flights back to Monday, I was outside the seven-day window. So the flight was going to cost another $100. But when I explained it all to Southwest Airlines, they honored my original ticket price.
Whew!
Close Calls
Sometimes, when the reality of my diagnosis hits me hard, I can’t help but feeling gypped out of time that I “deserve.”
But then those dark thoughts are tempered by others. Like the miracle that any of us are ever born in the first place. So many things have to be just right for a birth to occur. It’s the longest of long shots, really, a matter of timing, chance, physics, biology, spontaneous events, random decisions, and about a gazillion other things.
And then to think that such a long shot had to occur to every single person in our ancestry in order for you or I to be sitting here is a bit mind boggling.
Here’s another thought that hits me when I begin to feel cheated out of time: not too long ago, only a few hundred years back, no one expected to live as long as I have. To make it to forty was incredible. Indeed, there are places on this earth where famine and disease are prevalent and where folks would take a 45 year lifespan in a heartbeat. That would be a very good deal.
And then, I can’t help but think of those I’ve known who checked out before the age of 45. Tom T. Charley. Karyn. Donya. Marti. Sherrie. Their names float around in memories, as if waiting for someone to recall their lives.
But the main reason I have for knowing that time has not ripped me off is the memory of close calls I’ve had in my life. For the truth is, I’m living on borrowed time. I’m lucky to be here at all.
On two separate occasions, when I was too little to know any better, I ingested an alarming amount of medicine that tasted a bit too much like candy. (I guess I had a sweet tooth.) As a result my parents had to rush me to the emergency room twice to have my stomach pumped.
Another time my bed caught on fire after I’d brought a lamp under the blankets to read. The book was boring, I guess, so I fell asleep. My mom saved me that time.
Another time I got hit by a car while riding my bike to elementary school. And I’ve already told the story about how I used to climb to the very top of the tallest tree in my neighborhood. Had the branch snapped, it would’ve been all over.
As a teenager, I came up with this crazy idea to attempt to body surf through a flooded drain. My friends would hold my hands and lower me down to the drain, which was actually under the creek’s water. When I squeezed their hands, they would let go, and the force of the water would blast me through the drain to the other side, where other friends were waiting to grab me before I was thrust upon rocks further down the creek.
In high school and college, there were two knife incidents. The first occurred at a high school party when someone who was apparently stoned tried to kill me after I’d replaced his Lynyrd Skynyrd record with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as a joke. He didn’t think it was funny and was soon chasing me with a weapon. Friends rushed in and saved me. A few years later, in college, my future brother-in-law tried to break up a domestic dispute outside some apartments as we were walking toward Eskimo Joes. The angry boyfriend pulled a knife and had my future in-law cornered. I jumped on the guy from behind, holding his weapon-bearing hand, while somehow sucessfully talking him out of the murder.
Whew!
There were three car incidents. The first happened in high school when I was driving too fast to negotiate a turn, ran up a curb, and just missed a tree. The second time, a friend was driving and wanted to demonstrate how fast his car would go. At 115, the road veered ever so slightly, and I could feel the car beginning to slide. It somehow didn’t, but I knew we’d had a close call when I saw that my friend’s face was white as a ghost.
The third happened when a friend was driving a group of young marrieds home from a gathering in Norman. He was turning west onto Highway 9 (a notoriously dangerous two lane stretch) from a residential area, out in the Lake Thunderbird area. There were no cars coming from the east, i.e., our left, so he should’ve been free to turn into the highway’s westbound lane. But he hadn’t thought to look right, where an eastbound car was passing another. Thankfully, there was a bit of shoulder he’d turned onto, and we had the nearest of near catastrophic misses. (I won’t get into the boating incident we had with him a few years later.)
So you see, I’ve cheated death over and over again. I’m lucky to be here at all. Each day is truly a miracle and a gift.
Shaved! (photo by John Clanton)
The Jim Chastain Preservation Society
One of the more difficult (and panic-inducing) aspects of dealing with terminal illness, at least for me, is the desire to preserve the stories from my life. The clock is ticking, as they say, so I know that if I don’t write down this story or that from my past those stories will essentially die with me.
We preserve the memories and stories in our lives in various ways. Photography. Videos. Scrap-booking. Word of mouth. And some do it through writing.
This desire, to tell and preserve stories, has been a driving force in my life for many years. When I was a kid, I used to pretend my life was a movie and the whole world was watching. That may sound self-centered, but as I recall it was just a kid’s game of make believe. To keep the “movie” from being too boring, I had to crank up the action. That is, I tried to incorporate as much conflict, adventure and humor into my daily routine as possible. (No wonder I’ve had such a crazy life.)
Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that I became infatuated with books and movies as I grew older, for the power of story in the great novels and films is hard to deny. I read dozens of books each year as a kid, and I watched hundreds of movies. I’ve probably read The Chronicles of Narnia seven or eight times. I recall how thrilled I was when HBO was hooked up to my bedroom in high school. In college I took a job at a video store, and my nickname became “Mr. Movie.” Later, I began reviewing films for several newspapers, and I even wrote a couple of screenplays. Several true life stories from my childhood made their way into those scripts and are thus preserved forever, at least if anyone ever buys them and turns them into a film.
The desire to tell and preserve stories also played a big part in my interest in poetry, for poetry is a great vehicle for storytelling. Poems can be purely fictional, but they can also be entirely true. But perhaps most often, they are a blend of fiction and nonfiction, using both to reach a larger underlying truth.
When writing poems, I love to insert a memory or two from my life, for in so doing I know those memories will last a bit longer than I will. And during poetry readings, I enjoy telling the stories behind the poems whenever I can, i.e., how a series of seemingly random events led to the creation of something brand new.
The desire to tell and preserve stories was also the driving force behind my cancer memoir, I Survived Cancer But Never Won the Tour de France. Some absolutely crazy things happened to me during my initial five-year battle with cancer, and I wanted to share them. These were stories that went beyond the standard “here’s what happened when Jim had cancer.” They were hilarious, outrageous, and sad, all rolled up together. I wanted to preserve those stories and thereby show what living with cancer is really like. And in telling those stories, I was also able to insert numerous other memories from my life along the way.
Of course now that I’m “dying,” this desire to tell and preserve the stories from my life is stronger than ever. Not all of them, of course, for I’m surely not that interesting. But I’d love for the best ones to survive. Besides, I want my kids to remember me. I want my friends and family to recall the good ole days and the person I once was. And like so many others, I want the world to remember, at least for a little while, that I was here.
And so, after my grim diagnosis, I completed a list of 500 of the strongest memories from my life. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with that list, but I’m going to try to preserve as many of those stories as I can, through various means.
I’m working diligently on a new memoir, I Survived an Amputation But Never Became the Bionic Man. Like my first book, it will combine essays and poetry in an attempt to capture some truly crazy moments from the handicapped portion of my life. If I finish it, I’ll be able to cross those memories off the list.
I’m also working on a new poetry book, which I hope to have finished by the end of the summer. I’m going through all my poems, and those that preserve memories will be given special attention. Plus, I’m writing new poems all the time.
I hope to capture other stories from my past on video or simply by sharing them with others through email or a phone call. (I’ve already posted some on facebook and my website, under the label “16 random facts about Jim”.)
But beyond all those hopes and dreams, I am fortunate to have this Life is Real series, which has enabled me to capture and preserve so many stories, thoughts and memories from my life and to reconnect with dozens of people I have known. So many have written me notes about a certain event from our past, some escapade we shared, some trouble we found ourselves in, some laughs we shared. Some of those memories even I had forgotten, but now they are preserved once more.
Perhaps someday someone will turn these essays into a book. Perhaps not. But either way, I’d like to think that at least some of the stories I’ve shared have been preserved, at least for awhile, through laughter, tears, new discoveries, rekindled memories, and the reminder to live now while you can.
The Daily Ritual
Each morning of late, I awaken from my Rip Van Winkle-like slumber, surprised to find yet another day waiting for me. I slowly raise my head from the pillow, for the former seems to be glued to the latter, then pry my body up and away from the mattress, like metal from a magnet.
I have made it to the sitting position now, but the after-effects of chemo are trying to drag me back down, urging me to return to dreamland. But there is no solace there, for my dreams have been vivid lately and scary.
My eyes adjust to the light filtering in from outside, but I’m so blind I cannot begin to tell what time it is, even from the light. I grab my glasses from the bed stand and put them on. Then I reach over for the blessed cup of coffee my wife has made for me, like an angel who grants unspoken wishes. I take a sip and then it’s time to clear my nasal passages, which have been abused all night by Avastin, a medication I receive twice a month.
It’s about at this point that reality sets in, and I remember.
Oh yeah, I think. I’m dying.
After that, it’s hello to the wife and hello to the bathroom, but not necessarily in that order. My brain is beginning to make sense of things now, so I think of the day and what I’m supposed to accomplish. I let the dog and cat out, then return to bed, hoping to gain more strength with a little more rest and coffee.
I’m about to grab the pillows and place them comfortably behind me, but I notice they are covered in hair.
How gross, I think. I can’t sit against those hairy things. Even though it’s my own hair, I still find it disgusting. So I try to dust the hairs off the pillows, but for some reason this produces a gagging effect and I have to just shake them instead.
At some point, I stagger over to the shower, unsure if my knees will buckle along the way and I will fall, conking my head on the toilet.
“Nope, it weren’t the cancer that got him,” I imagine someone’s grandfather will say. “It was the durned toilet!”
I turn on the water and wait for it to get hot, then adjust it downward, to a temperature that will keep me from barfing or shivering, a fine line I assure you. Then I step into the shower, all the while keeping my lone hand on the wall for balance.
Showers are no longer soothing. Blood drips from my nose and I can hardly breathe. Nausea comes and goes. I’m itchy. Plus, I feel wobbly, so I eventually sit down on the floor, just to be safe.
I grab the soap and shampoo, and sometimes the razor. I wash myself quickly, then contemplate the shampoo. Should I wash my hair? Washing it will surely cause me to lose at least a hundred more hairs. But not washing seems to be an even scarier choice.
I eventually put a little dab of Head and Shoulders in my hand, and scrub it around a bit, checking my hand every five seconds or so for lost soldiers. When too many have gathered at one time, I stick my head under the water and let the water rain down on me, as one who is watering a pot of flowers.
Afterward, while drying off and dressing, I sneak glimpses at my ever balding head in the mirror.
Oh God, I think. It’s getting really bad now. I’ve moved from Woody Allen to Art Garfunkal territory. Or, worse, Larry from the Three Stooges.
Meanwhile, I’m dabbing my head with the towel, being careful all the while to avoid ”friction.”
This is my daily ritual.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that I’m now accepting hats.
I’m Sorry!
One of the things you eventually learn when you have a terminal illness is how much it messes with your emotions. Life is hard for everyone, of course, or at least for almost everyone. Being married (or in a serious relationship), raising kids (ouch!), holding down a job, balancing work and life, paying the bills, etc. None of it’s easy.
But when you add serious illness into the mix, well, things can spiral out of control. A person who is normally calm and collected may find themselves suddenly and unexpectedly lashing out at someone. An Incredible Hulk like change comes about, fueled by the release of pent up emotions. One second everything’s fine, the next second, fireworks.
I would never define myself as an angry person. And I don’t think very many people would define me that way. Indeed, anger and I have very little to do with each other.
However there’s this guy who stole the parking spot I was waiting for during the Christmas rush who probably thinks I should attend anger management classes. I think he was a little surprised when I shouted at him, accused him of stealing “my” spot (I’d been waiting longer, but he pulled in anyway), and gave him a completely unacceptable gesture.
While driving away from that ugly scene, I remember thinking to myself, What’s wrong with me? I never do anything like that!
My only conclusion was that it was my frustrating situation, how I’m dying way before my time and there’s nothing much I can do about it. I couldn’t explain my complete change of character in any other way.
A few minutes later, embarrassed and overwhelmed with guilt, I drove back towards the parking spot stealer and his buddy. Even though he’d started it, my reaction was completely unacceptable. So I told them that I was a complete idiot and that I was sorry.
They agreed with me about the idiot part and went on their way. And I thought to myself, You’d better be careful, Jim old boy. You have a lot of messed up emotions percolating deep down inside, and they’re just waiting for a chance to boil over.
Fast forward two months and that monster inside escaped once again.
I was at a copy place in Norman, a business that may have once had a name that rhymes with Stinkos. I was in a pretty good mood and was going to buy a few heavy-duty envelopes, because I had some books to mail.
When I entered the store, I was pleased to find I was the only customer inside. (Well, to be honest, there was one other guy. But he was at one of those self-serve copiers, so he didn’t really count.) It was late, but there were still four employees in the store. So with four employees for one customer, my chances of getting in and out of there quickly were good.
I grabbed the envelopes and headed toward the cash register. Nobody was there, but I wasn’t concerned. They’d get there soon enough, and I wasn’t really in a hurry.
I stood at the register for a couple of minutes, which is pretty long really, given the situation. At that point, I began wondering, what’s the deal? I noticed one of the employees was working on some machine in the back. This left one employee who was busy on a copying job and two female employees who were talking to each other behind the back counter.
Maybe they haven’t seen me, I thought. And so I moved over to the back counter. And there I stood patiently for another minute or two.
The female employees were about fifteen feet away and chatting about something. Could be work related, but it might not be. It was hard to tell. They weren’t facing me. They were turned to the side. Still, with any effort at all, they could’ve seen me with their peripheral vision. They wouldn’t even have to turn their heads.
How rude, I thought. A bell rings when you enter the store, so they were on notice that I was there.
Nevertheless, they kept chatting, somewhat nonchalantly, while I stood at the counter.
I wasn’t angry. If anything I was just surprised by the poor service. But I decided to rise above it, to handle it with grace.
I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me.”
One of the chatting women, the one closest to me, turned slowly and gave me what appeared to be a “go to hell” look.
“Yes?” she said with a put-off tone that had a hint of sarcasm.
“Umm… I was, uh, ready to check out.”
“Check out?” she said again with that same tone as before. “And what were you wanting to check out?”
It’s hard for me to describe the scornful tone she’d used when saying these things. But it was clear that she wanted me to know that she considered me a nuisance. That I had interrupted her.
What was I wanting to check out? Was she kidding? I was holding the envelopes in my hand, right there, in plain view.
The monster inside me was unleashed.
“Well,” I said with anger rising as I spoke. “I was under the impression that this is a store. You know, a place where customers walk in, pick up something they need, and then take it to the cash register to be checked out! Am I wrong?”
The employee gave me a hateful look that said, well, I hate you. She walked over, as slowly as she could, took the envelopes, and rang me up. I gave her a ten dollar bill, and she gave me the change, while staring at me and never speaking, much less apologizing.
“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t mean to be an ass, but come on!”
I turned and left. Then I went to the car and told Ford what had happened, expecting him to be on my side.
“Jeez, Dad,” he said. “You need to chill out.”
This bothered me. Ford hadn’t seen it my way. But he hadn’t been in there, for if he had he’d know that I was the one who was wearing the white hat here. In retail, the customer is always right.
But you can’t live a life you can be proud of that way, always looking for who’s right and who’s wrong. Turn the other cheek is a much better life philosophy, I think, even when you’re dying from cancer.
A couple weeks later, I was dropping off some videos nearby and saw that copy store again. And when I did I was ashamed at my actions. So I’d had to wait a few more minutes than I should have. Sure the service had been poor. Sure the woman had thrown fuel on the fire. But I was the one who had responded by humiliating her for her actions. Did she deserve it? Maybe. Did it make me feel good about myself? No. Quite the opposite.
On a whim, I headed to the copy store to apologize. After all, isn’t that what terminally ill people are supposed to do? You apologize to all those people you’ve ever wronged.
I stepped into the store to see if “she” was there. Yes, she was.
Oh dear.
“She” was helping a male customer at the same back counter where I’d confronted her two weeks before. I took my place in line behind the customer. We briefly made eye contact, and I could see that she recognized me.
As I waited for my turn, my thoughts turned briefly to this apologizing business. Who else did I need to apologize to?
Let’s see… there was my second grade teacher, who retired a few years back after forty years of teaching. At her retirement party, she’d named my class as her worst ever. I knew I had played a big part in that, so she was a good apology candidate.
Sorry Mrs. G.!
A girl named Cindy lived down the street from me when I was in grade school. I’d played a joke on her one time, burying a note in my backyard at a time when I knew she was watching. Afterward, she asked me if I liked anyone, and I said yes, but I would never tell. I had written it down and hidden it though. Afterward, I hid and watched her sneak into my backyard and dig up the note. “Fooled you, you big dummy,” the note said. I don’t know if it bothered her, but it had always bothered me.
Sorry Cindy!
A girl named Joleta from junior high school wrote me recently to remind me how I used to tease her relentlessly and how she had to fish her comb out of the library book drop everyday after I’d dropped it in there.
No permanent damage hopefully, but sorry Joleta!
I got into a fist fight with one of my best friends in college. It was a regrettable event, fueled by competition for a certain girl and happy hour. Our relationship never recovered.
Sorry Gary!
Other names were surfacing. Shawn and Stan. Mollie. An Assistant Manager at Taco Tico. Caroline. A lawyer named David.
But wait a minute. What the heck was taking so long?
I looked up and saw the female employee who had started this stroll down bad memories lane. She was being rude to the customer in front of me, rolling her eyes, sighing, giving off all kinds of negative body language.
What?
I turned and walked away, saving that particular I’m sorry for someone more deserving.
Thanks for the Prayers
It’s impossible to know, but I may be one of the most prayed for people in the history of the world. Honestly, although I’m wholly undeserving, you’d have to look long and hard to find someone who has received more prayers than me.
Part of it has to do with how long I’ve been actively dealing with serious illness. My eight-year cancer anniversary is coming up, for I first noticed a problem in May of 2001. The prayers began not too long after that.
It’s not just the length of time, those eight years, of course. It has more to do with the back-and-forth intensity of the battle, all the recurrences, surgeries, radiation, and chemo. Cancer came, but then it went away. It came back after about a year, but then went away again. Then it came back and went away for the third time.
Third time’s a charm, right? Wrong. Cancer hit me for the fourth time in 2004 and they took my arm as a result. And then after three years, cancer came roaring back for the fifth time, and it seems to have no definitive plans to leave.
So I’ve had many crises during the last eight years, and prayers tend to spike during such times, like telephone calls at the end of American Idol. When news gets out that someone is sick or about to have surgery, people pray. What else can we do?
The amount of prayers I’ve received also has to do with the fact that I’m fortunate to know a lot of people. I try to keep up with friends from my hometown, high school, college, and past jobs. I’ve met a lot of people as a result of my current job as a lawyer and my work as a film critic, writer, poet, and band manager. And more importantly, my wife teaches at a middle school and knows half of Norman. She’s also the friendly, outgoing type, and that goes a long way.
I also know a lot of people as a result of my time in church. My wife and I were quite involved at one particular church for many years. LeAnn was on staff briefly and I served in many roles. As a result, we met and became friends with dozens upon dozens of great people from good families, including many church staff members, most of whom are now scattered around the country.
Also, many people have come to know of my situation as a result of my cancer memoir (I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France), my website (www.jimchastain.com), and this Life is Real series.
Anyway, all these things, as well as the ongoing madness that is terminal illness, have combined to create a situation that’s ripe for prayer. And as a result, I’ve been blessed with a faithful prayer community, one that would likely register in heavenly record books.
I’ve received a card from a men’s prayer group in Shreveport almost every month for the last seven years. They’ve prayed for me, the card says, usually without further amplification. I’m not exactly sure of my connection to these guys, but I’m thankful for them.
My boss’s Sunday School class has been praying for me diligently over the years. It’s one of the constancies in my life, something I can count on. In this crazy, mixed up world, that matters.
Many other churches pray for me regularly. My parents’ church, for example, and many Norman churches to which we are somehow connected. I’ll receive a card from the staff or a note from a pastor or an email from a church member that tells me they prayed. (One church never sends a card, but does send regular notices about their upcoming money raising efforts– but that’s another topic.)
People stop me all the time and say they’ve been praying for me. Others tell me this via incredible hand-written letters, thoughtful cards, or encouraging email messages. Some have posted nice notes on this blog.
It’s quite a blessing, to know you’re being prayed for. It makes you feel connected, cared for, loved. It helps when you’re dealing with the loneliness and isolation of terminal illness or thoughts of being gone and forgotten.
Still, if I’m to be completely honest, I don’t always know what to do with prayer. After all these years, it still confuses me. Obviously, praying does not always, or even usually, give you the result you want. It often seems like a one-way activity, that is, one side does all the talking while the other does all the listening.
It does help in efforts to decompress, however. And it does help sort things out. Poetry is a big part of my life, and I don’t see an appreciable difference between poetry and prayer in most instances, especially when you consider the Psalms, which are ancient poem/songs. (By the way, if you’re interested in this topic, I’ve written more about prayer in my cancer memoir.)
Even though prayer is more than a little mysterious, when people tell me they’ve been praying for me, or that they pray for me every day, or that they just prayed for me, I’m truly grateful. “Thank you for your prayers,” I say, for I know that a prayer means they care about me and took the time from their busy life to put those concerns into words.
I wanted to do the same thing here. And so, for all of you who’ve prayed for me, thank you! I may not be “well,” in the medical sense, but I’m still here.
Oh Brother!
I was in this cancer center, receiving treatments, minding my own business. Although I was typing away on my computer, a woman sitting not too far away wanted to talk. It didn’t matter that I was busy. We both had cancer, and she was bound and determined to share.
Oh well, I thought. What can you do?
When the conversation began, it was within that great circle we’d all consider normal chit-chat, or at least on its fringes. But the discussion soon moved outside the circle, into what I considered bizarre, perhaps even worrisome, territory. And not too long after that it ventured out even further, into … the Twilight Zone.
She started telling me about all the doctors and hospitals that had committed malpractice with respect to her medical care. Something about all the abortions she’d had and how the doctors hadn’t taken those into account. I responded to her observations with a polite word or two, then went back to work. But she continued pursuing me, like a bully on the playground.
“Hey, a group of us are putting some money together to bring in Brother Bob–the faith healer,” she said.
The man’s name wasn’t Brother Bob, of course. It was something else I’d never heard of and have long since forgotten. But my chatty co-patient certainly knew him, this Brother Bob fellow. The mere mention of his name was supposed to impress me, apparently, for she’d dropped his name like a fisherman drops his hook into the water and leaves it hanging for the next hungry fish that swims by.
I didn’t take the bait. Didn’t even glance in her direction.
“And…” she said, with the pause to end all pauses. “Rumor has it he’s bringin’ Sister Clementine with him.”
She spoke these words, which I’m now paraphrasing, with the sort of drama and emphasis one might use upon discovering U2 was planning a secret concert in a friend’s backyard. She seemed to think the news would make the few remaining hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end and the tears flow freely from my dry, bloodshot eyes.
Or, she was a complete huckster. It was hard to say.
(By the way, I apologize to all the Brother Bobs and Sister Clementines out there, faith healers or not. I’ve picked your names out randomly with no knowledge of your existence or healing propensities and with a complete absence of malice.)
“It’s a great opportunity for people like you and me,” she said.
I kept typing, hoping it might somehow discourage her. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed as though this woman was about to hit me up for some money to pay for these superstar faith healers.
“I mean, when the medical route fails you, you gotta go with the spiritual route, right? And these guys are the real thing. There are documented accounts.”
She went on to speak of some of these accounts, all hearsay of course. And then she waited for me to respond.
I stopped typing, looked her in the eyes, and said, firmly, ”I’m really not interested.” Then I started typing again.
But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Now I don’t know about you, but I believe in the Bible,” she said, somewhat accusatorily. ”And the more I read it, the more I discover how absolutely perfect and true it is.”
I didn’t want to fight her on it. It was the Bible, after all, and people have strong opinions about it. And I really didn’t want to get into religion. Still, I could see where this conversation was heading.
“Did you know that there isn’t a time in the Bible when Jesus came across a sick person and didn’t heal them? You see God wants us to be well! And you know what else? The Bible promises us seven score years. That’s a promise, a guarantee! God’s plan is for everyone to be healthy, to live at least seventy years. Problem is, we’ve gone and messed everything up.”
Now I’ve been to church more than my fair share, and I’d never heard any of this seventy year business. I figured it was pure baloney. Besides, who other than Abraham Lincoln and King James uses the phrase “seven score years?”
“I want my seventy years!” she said. “And I’d get ‘em if these medical quacks hadn’t messed it all up. But that’s where someone like Brother Bob come in. And faith. You’ve gotta have enough faith.”
I couldn’t remain quiet anymore. Someone had to speak up for all the people who had died of an illness before the age of seventy.
“I don’t believe any of that crap,” I said, suppressing as much anger and indignity as I could.
“What, the Bible?” she asked.
“I don’t believe that every person in the history of time who ever died from a sickness before the age of seventy died because they didn’t have enough faith or because they didn’t meet the right faith healer. I mean, think about it. What about the plague? What about all the children who’ve died, not to mention the infants? Did they all die from a lack of faith?”
“Children are different,” she explained.
“Okay. So what about all the people who’ve never even heard of the Bible? And what about those who were raised in some other faith? It doesn’t make sense!”
“Well, for them …” she began. But I interrupted her.
“And why,” I asked, ”would a person’s ’faith’ be an absolute guarantee of seventy years of good health, but have no effect whatsoever on, say, murder or natural disasters? Do you know how many wives and children are killed each year as a result of domestic violence? Why was it okay for all but one of Jesus’ disciples to be horribly murdered, but it’s not okay for them to die of the flu at age 69?”
“Well…,” she said.
“What about tornadoes and tsunamis? What about all those kids who were crushed to death in China’s earthquakes? Why would one’s faith control one thing but not the other?”
I was on a rant, I suppose. But this was a touchy subject for someone dying of stage four colon cancer that had spread to the liver and lungs.
“Health is different,” she said.
“Why?”
She went on to explain about prayer and sin and “God’s plan,” before asking some very personal questions about my beliefs and the amount of faith that I’d applied to my current situation.
I countered with how maddening it is when people use that elusive concept known as ”God’s plan” to explain every difficult issue under the sun. I spoke of the guilt and sorrow that results when someone is accused of not having enough faith when they’re fighting to live. And I mentioned the impossibility of knowing, much less proving, how much faith a person has.
“I’ve prayed the prayers,” I said. “I’ve applied as much faith as I can muster to my situation. Yet here I sit. There are no guarantees.”
She remained quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts after our heated discussion. I hadn’t stopped her, but she had realized I wasn’t going to roll over. But before she could start a new round, a nurse stepped into the room and interrupted us.
As it goes with such discussions, nobody had won. Neither of us had changed the other’s mind. We’d simply stated our positions and left them hanging there. She represented a viewpoint held by thousands of others, one that will never go away, one that generates a lot of mail and email for recipients like me.
Did she have her heart in the right place? Was she just plain dumb or smart as a fox? Were her words the result of anger and depression or was she on to something?
Well, you’ll have to make your own mind up about that. I’m just trying to tell you what happened. But here’s how the conversation ended.
She’d been going on about a certain media personality and whether or not he was a “bleeding heart liberal,” her term for an idiot, someone who was headed, as Billy Bob Thornton might say in Sling Blade, “straight to Hades.” I had responded by saying that, although I sometimes agreed with this person, I didn’t agree with their confrontational tone, when someone’s persona is defined by attacking others.
At this point, my treatments were over and I was heading out the door. But she had one more piece of advice for me before I left, one parting shot: “Hey, if you do give up, you’d better decide which side you’re on.”
Regarding Liars
All The Pretty Liars
“It’s only a cyst,”
they said, long ago.
But I wasn’t sure
and wanted to know.
“It’s only so big,”
they said. What an answer!
Little or not the
damn thing was cancer.
“It’s only an arm,”
they said, with a knife.
“So what will it be then,
your arm or your life?”
“It’s only one organ,”
they said. “You don’t need it.
We’ll take it right out
and a pump will succeed it.”
‘It’s only your hair,”
they said. “Don’t get down.
Bald guys are everywhere,
they’re all over town.”
“It’s only your eyebrows,”
they said. ‘No big deal.”
But whenever they’re missing
it’s a little surreal.
“It’s only your dignity,
only your pride.
You’re lookin’ terrific!”
they said. But they lied.
march 2009
