May you find joy and hope in this season of Darkness and Light. An excerpt from It's Not About the Hair: And Other Certainties of Life & Cancer:
December
I
was just completing my first year of being off chemo. But there were all kinds
of beginnings and endings happening around me. Lisa had completed the last
possible treatment for her cancer. We were now giving her palliative care:
packed red blood cells, platelets, hydration. We referred to this as the, “red
wine, white wine, water,” regimen. She had already had hospice come in and do
an initial assessment with her.
She cut off her long hair before it all fell out and had a wig made that
looked perfectly natural—until now.
She had lost so much weight that it perched on her head like a little
blonde nest.
If
it had been any other patient in this situation, I would never have mentioned
that I was coming up on my chemo anniversary. But I had known Lisa for several
years and knew she would celebrate with me.
I
knocked and slid open the door to her room. I was surprised to see that she was
fast asleep and even more surprised to see that she was not wearing her wig. A
soft knitted cap covered her head. I was just backing out her room when she
opened one of her eyes, lifted her hand and gave me a little smile.
“Come
in,” she said softly. “I have a question for you.”
I
gelled my hands. That was our policy at the clinic: “Gel in, gel out.” It was
like rubbing clean smelling slime on your hands. Or blowing your nose without a
Kleenex. Or shaking hands with a slug. You get the picture.
Lisa
and I always joked about this because everyone who stands there rubbing his or
her hands together looks like some mad scientist eager to inflict some
horrendous pain. The unfortunate thing about this is that we both thought that
at times, it was true.
So
I rubbed my hands together and said in my best Transylvanian accent, “Yes, my
darling. What is your question before I stick the electrodes on your eyeballs?”
“The
hospice nurses come in every couple of days. But at the end, don’t you think
they should be there all time, because what if I fall out of bed?”
I
kept rubbing my hands together way after the gel had evaporated. I grabbed a
rolling stool from the corner of the room and sat down. Then I lowered the seat
and cleared my throat. I bought myself about fifteen seconds doing all of this.
“You
won’t fall out of bed at the end,” I said.
“How
do you know?”
“You
won’t have enough energy. You barely have enough energy to go to the bathroom
now, right?”
“Right.”
“Well,
at the end, most people don’t have a lot of energy and they usually go into a
coma. If you’re in a coma, you’re not jumping around and you won’t fall out of
bed. ”
“Okay.”
I
rolled up close to the bed and took her hand. “If you’re really afraid of that,
you can have someone stay in the room with you.” She didn’t say anything for a long time, just lay there
gripping my hand. I saw that she was getting the “white wine” today.
Finally
she said, “I told my daughter that Mommy is probably going to die from the
cancer.”
“What
did she say?”
“She
said, ‘I don’t’ want you to die, Mommy. What if I have a problem and need to
ask you a question?’ I told her, ‘When you have a question, all you have to do
is get very, very quiet and very, very still and ask your question. Then being
as still and as quiet as you can be listen very carefully and Mommy and God
will give you an answer. And as you get older, when you very quiet and very
still, you will hear your own voice.’”
Here
it was December and I had seen parents feverishly shopping and buying their
children all kinds of toys and games and books and clothes. How many parents
had thought of giving their children the gift of learning how to listen to God
and listen to their own voice? Because I was fighting back tears, my voice was
sort of thick when I said, “What an incredible gift you’ve given her.”
“Thank
you. “
Get
very still and get very quiet. I felt as if I spent most of my time as a
chaplain telling people to check in with their breath, to quiet themselves, to
listen. What if we all had learned to do this as children? Maybe I’d be out of
a job.
There are times when I feel as if I am
in the presence of some kind of Higher Being. That afternoon with Lisa I felt
like that. She was thoughtful and filled with peace. I know that some people
who work with energy say that energy is just energy. Period. But I disagree.
I’ve been with people whose energy felt scattered or chaotic or nervous. Maybe
it’s a matter of semantics. But Lisa’s energy felt divine and I wanted to sit
there and bask in it.
Then
she said, “It’s wonderful to sit in the silence with you.”
It’s
wonderful to sit in the silence with you. The words wrapped around me in that way I recognized as Spirit speaking.
We sat for quite a long time holding hands in the silence and I didn’t tell her
about my chemo anniversary.
