What Now?

Thank you all for your generous support and feedback! I am feeling so well-nourished by your heartfelt responses, as well as safe and secure. I know when the time comes to cross over, I will have to go alone, but I find my fear of that moment diminishing. I am reminded of the 17 year old Barbara leaving for college, the 19 year old leaving for Europe, and the 21 year old leaving for a whole new life of marriage, all with a mixture of fear and excitement, all with loved ones left in their grief, happiness and a little relief, waving good-by. What I know now, that I was not consciously aware of then, is that the separation was eased for me by all the caring and love that I had unwittingly absorbed from that community of friends and family. The adjustment afterwards for me was fraught with the difficulties and resistances of growing up, and I don't know what I have waiting for me in this instance. What I have learned from all the sturm und drang of my life is that I do better when I can stay focused on what is right here to do now.

Thanks especially to those of you who have been questioning me. Some of you are asking ,”Where is the fight,” as in Lawrence LeShan's well-received book of many years ago, You Can Fight For Your Life. “Are you just accepting it?” Others are wondering if I've given any thought to the emotional, psychological, personal relationship to my cancer. Hasn't much of my life been devoted to the search for understanding those connections? Yes, but has it been too much in the service or desire to control the lives of others without enough regard to my own life and process? Sweet Courtney gently says, “You know, you worry a lot about others...” And I am asking myself, “Is this another opportunity to confront lifelong issues of avoidance and boundaries?”

My internal response to “are you fighting” is a mixture of contemplating the philosophy of aikido, which I find attractive but actually know very little about; realizing that I may have accepted the diagnosis, but not really the prognosis; determining with the force of a fight to stay conscious and actively live in every minute. The question of psychosomatics is knottier for me. I have spent a lifetime exploring this terrain, beginning with my childhood in Christian Science. My family left the church when I was still quite young, but not before I had learned how to disempower illness and bodily discomfort. Much of my early professional work centered on incorporating practices of the mind-body connection into western medical settings. Yet, should I be asking myself, “How did I invite this cancer to grow inside me? Am I doing everything I can to keep it from flourishing?”

I'm not sure there are certain answers to these questions. I certainly don't know. What I do know is that we are all powerless over the forces of nature, not helpless, but powerless. How I treasure the hours spent in the garden with Jeff gently demonstrating this truth over and over again ( I am NOT a quick study in this regard). “We'll plant it at the right time in good dirt, where we know it might be likely to grow; we'll give it the right amount of water and food; then we'll see what happens.” Sometimes, although we tended them well, the plants did not flourish; sometimes they died.

So far, my pondering leads me to invoke the prayer that says it all:

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.