I weep, internally feeling the strong pangs of emotional pain and externally tasting the saltiness of the tears flowing down my saddened, concerned face.
It wasn’t a journey I personally would have chosen to embark on. But life has a way of constructing detours that change our whole perspective on what is most important in our lives.
In my mind’s eye, I return to that fateful day on May 23rd, 2001, a day that felt like an eternity of hell. There were complications I was told by the nurse, “The surgery will take longer than expected. But he’s doing o.k.” For a moment, some relief, six hours later, the surgeon walks in and announces, “Your husband has a horrible disease. It’s Hodgkin’s.”
In the barren waiting room, I feel numb, alone and unmovable, like the statuesque, black vending machines waiting to serve the hungry and thirsty. But I need spiritual and emotional sustenance. I need a warm body to soothe, to comfort my present mental confusion and exhaustion, to uplift my spirits which suddenly and unexpectedly were stricken, decreasing my flow of positive energy like the constricted and blocked arteries of a heart attack victim.
I weep, internally feeling the strong pangs of emotional pain and externally tasting the saltiness of the tears flowing down my saddened, concerned face.
My sense of helplessness has been heightened, putting me more deeply in touch with my own mortality. Anger seeps in. As I look into this anger more deeply, I find that underneath it is my fear of loss. And I know I’m not ready to deal with it. Carl Yung wrote, “Let in the darkness, the shadow.” And so I allow myself a narrow passage, albeit in hesitation, to touch and experience the intensity of my overwhelming anger-an anger that is fiery, yet fearful of expression.
The days while you are in the hospital pass by slowly. I sit here quietly, as darkness sets into our family room. I can liken this darkness, this feeling of doom, to being in a big black box with no openings. It feels dark, bleak. I want to escape from it to some illusion of security or pathological defense that will, if momentarily, provide me with a shield of armor from the fire of the pain. So I step into this deep, dark valley which has opened my wounds. And I cry.
I try to imagine what life would be like without you. I cry again. Despair sets in. I want to escape into a world of fantasy of our walking together, hand in hand. Talking of past good times is a ritual, dreaming of future adventures, individual passions.
In the quietude, I think back to sweet, unforgotten memories, tempered by many joys and tears of living. With wistful eyes, I look within and reminisce about these tender times. I remember the long, bare-footed walks along the beach at Watch Hill. Later going to get our ritualistic ice cream cones mine always vanilla and yours is chocolate chip. Our hikes in Vermont were sitting on the rocks of a mountain to inhale the panoramic, lush views of mountains and farmlands. Carved deeply into my memory, I hunger, ache and thirst for those brief intimate interludes that etched my heart with serenity and pure infinite joy. I seek comfort within the quietude of this place to cauterize the intense hurt, hush the winds of my despair and heal my aching heart. But I feel as fragile as the lonely mushroom that unknowingly gets stepped on.
To heal, I know I must give myself permission to experience joy and to revel in the pluses of what was. Healing asks that I look forward and up. Sometimes the pain gets in my way and I try to anesthetize it. It’s like a large stone that I cannot roll away. But I learn that this behavior also anesthetizes my joy. I focus on healing. I am aware that to transcend this pain, grief and rage is to enlarge my compassion and wisdom.
I invite you, Joe, into this healing relationship with me so that we can heal together. Hopefully, my very presence facilitates something untouchable, but present. I sit with you and you don’t have to be alone and insecure in this small, dark fearful place. Holding hands, we talk about the future. The unknown, he expresses his deepest fear, that of dying. Leaving me alone to conquer struggles conflicts was my own unrehearsed future. We cry. Losses are emotional earthquakes of varying degrees of intensity, the greater the intensity, the larger the possibility for more fundamental reconstruction to take place with in.
Life and loss are a package deal. We do not fully say yes to life unless we also say yes to death Charles A. Beard reframes loss when he wrote,
“When it get darkest, the stars come out,
When the bee steals from a flower, it also
fertilizes the flower.”
Together we can enter a realm of self-discovery and write our blueprints for recovery, removing the impediments and allowing the constricted energy to flow naturally like a river. We discover the hidden reality, but do not wallow in it, allowing free reign and willingness to find the deeper message in this unwanted journey, which will eventually transform and transcend us.
I embrace some hope, which though not directly visible, illuminates me like the sun, shining on a stained-glass window. I fully experience and appreciate these brief interludes, and feel blessed. Hopefulness turns me into a choreographer. I choose my own dance steps and write my own tunes. I set the stage. ACT 1 follows, intermission, a brief interlude that will change our lives forever.
Unrelenting fatigue has set in and I witness you take frequent naps. I look across the large darkened room and watch you asleep on the sofa. Your hair thinned your scalp visible. The shape of your body is witness to the weight you have lost, your clothes now ill-fitting. For a moment, I smile as I look at your big toe peering out from one of your stocking feet. I think to myself, “How many times have I told you to trim your nails. They always cut through your socks.” Words alone cannot define my helplessness. I do know I must grieve and give expression to these feelings, otherwise, I will stagnate. I know the process, long and painful. I’ve done this countless times with others, but as the griever, the all too familiar steps seem so foreign. Or am I just afraid? I repeatedly question the why and wherefore of reality. I unlock my heart, allowing these questions to seep in to unravel and unveil life’s mysteries. There is a struggle and agony behind this often-asked question. There are no answers, no absolutes, only acceptance. All searching ends, strangely, in my silent awareness and insistent questioning, I do not feel alone.
Ramana Maharshi writes, “You are not the wave, you are the ocean.” I feel embraced and reassured by this thought. I realize when there is a storm at sea, there is always stillness at the bottom of the ocean. So I look within myself and find my spiritual essence and the universality of pain and feel hushed with stillness, with peace. In this solitary interlude, I close my eyes and pray, ‘The Lord is my shepherd . . .’
By reading this, I see you are a writer's writer. I can only dream of writing about emotions the way you have is this piece. In my autobiography, I wrote about how I felt about my sudden change of life from normal one with paralysis and 20 years of age. I did not use the expanded language that you use, but rather a more direct, statement of the pain, generally followed by something positive ideas to try to overcome the pain and the fear of becoming gradually worse over the years until I was still alive, but totally incapacitated.
I experienced some confusion because I did not know who you were referring to that got Hodgkin's disease. Since you refer to "he" I had to assume that you got the disease and you were writing from the viewpoint of someone else. Regardless of who was suffering, from with inside the person suffering or from outside, someone suffering from being close to the person with the disease, the expression of how one is feeling is superb.
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It wasn’t a journey I personally would have chosen to embark on. But life has a way of constructing detours that change our whole perspective on what is most important in our lives.
