Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Making Love, Not War


I have recently started reading a blog and as blogs sometimes do, this one started out discussing one thing but has veered into quite different territory as the author's wife, Susan, has the bad, bad cancer and sorrowfully, it just doesn't look good. They have young kids and it's pretty much a worse case scenario and even though I do not know these people at all, my heart is broken for them.
And this dear man's readers are very supportive. Yesterday's post showed a picture of Lance Armstrong himself, holding a sign saying, "Win, Susan!" And most of the people commenting are saying things along those lines.
You can beat it! Don't stop fighting! Believe in miracles!
And so forth.
We have such a perception of disease being an enemy within our bodies that we can battle against. And sometimes, with some diagnoses, there are people (Lance Armstrong being the poster boy for this particular example) who can beat it. They can muster the reserves, the strength, the will, the health insurance, the money, the best doctors that money and health insurance can buy, and they can kick cancer's ass. Or some other disease's ass.
I've known a few who did.
But I've known a few who couldn't, either.
There are some diagnoses that simply do not announce a winnable battle. And it's the battle thing I want to talk about.
When my friend Lynn died and we were trying to write the obituary, I wanted so badly for it not to say, as so many do, that she died after "a long battle" with her particular illness.
There was no battle with her disease, no war to be waged, only the inevitable slow decline which ended with her in a nursing home, her last days and months a nightmare of her inability to speak, to walk, to dance, to sing, to do anything that had brought this strong, wonderful woman pleasure in her too-short life.
And then she died.
Which in her case, if there was a triumph of any sort, was it.
But somehow, when the obituary ran, that damn phrase was in there: After a long battle...
And I have seen people, fighting for some sort of miracle up until the last moment, completely denying the only real miracle possible, which is the peace that comes with acceptance.
And I don't know if I could find that peace. I have no idea. But I hope I could because it's nothing but a waste of time and energy and let's face it- money- looking for that miracle in some cases. I have heard that 90% of medical expenses come in the last month of a person's life.
How much better to ask hospice (those blessed angels) into our lives, accept the fate that has been handed down, and do the work that needs to be done before we leave this life? To spend whatever time we have left not battling an unwinnable war, but giving the best of what we have to the ones we love and letting them give that to us.
I understand that it is only human of us to want to fight death. Everything within us, every cell in our bodies, wants to live. That is simply the truth and so continuing to fight even when the fight is futile, is the path that every fiber of our being must want to embrace.
I think that acceptance is probably the harder path to take, although in our culture, we see it as the choice of a weakling. Someone not brave enough for the fight.
But is it bravery or is it merely fantastical thinking?
I am not saying here that this blogger's wife or any person with a similar diagnosis should not explore every option for a continued life but there has to be a point when the exploration, the battle, begins to serve no purpose but to distract us from the reality of what is to come.
Doctors don't always help us know when this point has been reached. They sometimes continue to offer treatment when they know that treatment is, at best, merely going to prolong a life and the attending agony for a short while. Sometimes, the treatment even adds to the agony.
And of course, families and friends don't want their loved one to die and I think that so often they, out of denial and love and an inability to discuss the inevitable, continue to cheer the dying on to find a different treatment, to try and WIN this battle when perhaps the person dying really would just like to let it all go and die in peace.
Is that so wrong?
I don't think there should be any shame in facing death with acceptance or with helping our loved ones do the same. In fact, it may be the bravest, most courageous thing we ever do, for ourselves or for others. To say no more to the chemo, the radiation, to the trips to and from the hospital, the doctors' offices. To stay at home, to accept the help with all that needs to be done to make us comfortable, to say, "I love you," to the ones we love. To say, "Thank-you," to the ones we need to thank. To reflect on what has been, to be at peace with what is to come.
That's what I'm thinking about today. That I hope when my time comes I will know when it's time to fight and I will know when it's time to stop.
And I hope that my family, my loved ones, will have the strength and courage to let me do that and will help me do that.
I would want my obituary not to say after a long battle, but with words along the lines of, Where some may have waged war, she sought peace and resolution, understanding and love.
Some say there can be no joy in death, but I am here to tell you I have seen it. But that joy cannot creep in, it cannot be present, when war is still being waged.
And when we face the inevitable, perhaps the glory comes not in fighting it, but in accepting it, taking that last last breath and sailing across the abyss, over darkness, into light, as unencumbered, as freely and with as much lightness of being as we can muster.
And although I would hope for a miracle for this woman I've never met (and for all of us, really), and for her to be able to get well, to take care of her children, to live a long and healthy life, when her time comes, I would hope that she has no sense of surrendering to any sort of war, of failing to battle her disease properly, but instead, the sense of having surrendered to the light and the love that will surely surround her.

6 comments:

  1. I agree, very much so. Well said, very well said.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I want to add that I have seen that sort of, "well, you can fight it!" encouragement backfire badly. In a way, it becomes a way to blame the victim. They didn't pray hard enough, they didn't fight harder enough. They must not have really wanted to live, how dare they?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was going to say that too, DTG! but I got too long-winded as it was, which is my biggest fault as a writer and I know it.
    Anyway, thank you for adding that.
    Remember when Grammy's sister, Lavee, propped her up in bed and gave her a perm when she was dying? She was SURE that a perm would give her the will to keep on trying to "beat it."
    And Grammy let her do that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, this is a topic I've thought a lot about since my friend's 8 yr. old grandson died of cancer a year or so ago. Oh, he "battled" all right. His daddy made sure of that! And at the end, his Momma told him he was going to die and you know what he said? Yeah. "I didn't fight hard enough?" Oh, did my heart break for him when I heard that. Eight years old. :(

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lopo- that is the saddest thing I've ever heard.
    Whoa.
    I could not possibly imagine a better (worse?) example of exactly what I'm talking about.
    Lord have mercy.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes. That was a big deal for me, when I realized I couldn't fight somebody's illness, I had to treat it with the same love I had for that person. That was so important.
    I got that from this book
    (Healing Into Life and Death by Stephen Levine), that I will continue to promote to my dying day, at which point I will pass it on the the people I care about to help them deal that. This post reminded me of that book generally... Yes yes.

    :)

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.