The wisdom of cancer
We talk about care giving. We talk about treatment. We talk about living with cancer.
We need to talk about the wisdom that comes from hearing the words “You have cancer.”
People change when they hear those words. What is it that comes over them, especially the terminally ill cancer patients?
Is it because they see a measured life in front of them, one where they can count the days left to be with their family and friends, that they have a different outlook on life? The wisdom that we see in these people is something important: it’s a lesson in learning about living, about understanding life and about dying.
Are we smart enough to pay attention, to see these lessons being played out in front of our eyes?
I have a neighbor who is that smart. Her father has finished his chemotherapy. His doctors have done what they can and they’ve told him the truth about his metastatic disease. He’s at peace with his fate, but he hasn’t stopped living. He’s adjusted his life now and is concentrating on what he considers the important parts of that life, before the cancer weighs-in.
He wants to go home. He wants to visit a country far away from here where his roots run deep. And then, if his illness allows, he will return to live out his days.
His daughter understands his wish. She see’s him, not as the Dad she’s always loved and looked up too, but as a man who has attained new wisdom from his battle with cancer. She admires his strength through all the treatment. She is in awe of his courage, as he faces the rest of his days.
No one knows how many days are left, but he knows, with his new found wisdom, what he must do before his calendar runs out.
The wisdom of cancer is real.
May 7, 2014 @ 8:27 pm
It certainly is a hard won and dearly paid for wisdom. I have been humbled, appalled, graced and dismissed, seen fear, panic and acceptance. Those are all my emotions as they are theirs, I am them and they are me. I hope I have gained some of the wisdom and grace that have been displayed by the patients and the survivors I have been around.
May 6, 2014 @ 10:22 pm
Enjoyed today’s post because it reminds me that you can be living fully even as you are dying. A very admirable lesson to take to heart.
May 5, 2014 @ 7:21 pm
And sometimes, the doctors get wrong the number of days left on the calendar.
Five years ago this morning, Patrick died. He first called me before Thanksgiving 2007 to tell me he had cancer, the doctors gave him maybe six weeks. Everything got compressed, and we said what we imagined could have been a last goodbye; but he didn’t die. The cancer took a respite before taking his life May 5, 2009.
Patrick had taken his lessons from his mother-in-law, whom he nursed through her cancer. He told me he didn’t want to die as she had, in deep pain as much from the treatments as from her cancer. He knew when to stop his treatments. He got everything in order that he could. For the last birthday he would live through, his friends all brought him pies. He loved pie but he couldn’t eat a slice from all of the pies he had that day, there were so many. He had some very good days, not knowing which would be his last. And that was a lesson he left me: to live as if there are no more days but the one that begins with the sun’s rise and ends when you close your eyes. I haven’t been a good follower of his lesson. But I also don’t fear dying; that was another lesson Patrick left me.
May 5, 2014 @ 10:08 pm
How wonderful Mo..my own sister taught me similar lessons. Wisdom I wish I had when Jim was dying.
May 5, 2014 @ 10:30 pm
Not true, MO…You carry Patrick in your heart every day….if that’s not a loving lesson, I don’t know what is.
Thinking of you
Laurie