I’ve Learned One More Important Lesson

Now I feel like I’ve been a pompous ass whenever I’ve walked beside my friends with cancer. Somehow I thought I could see the karma and dharma of their lives and know the reasons for this wild-growing, crazy disease taking over their bodies.

One friend long ago, I was sure, had brought back her rapid-growing, metastatic breast cancer after beating it for four years because she couldn’t figure any other way to get out of a marriage with a domineering husband. What did I know? I certainly have had no right to second guess another friend’s ovarian cancer as being the result of her holding her emotions in check or another’s for feeling powerless. Who have I thought I was?

Now I realize I’ve been nothing but a mis-informed, mis-quided, well-meaning ego trying to assert some kind of control over my own fear regarding the big “C”.

Why my husband contracted this disease sits on my chest and makes me scream. I can come up with my theories but it serves no purpose now. Even the oncologist said he didn’t think it was because of his 22 years of accumulated smoking. The cell structure was too rounded and contained. He ‘guessed’ it was more a matter of Y having inhaled some piece of something forming an irritated space in his right lung. The irritation allowed a weakness where the mutating organism could begin. What made it begin? No one knows that for sure either. Yes, it could have been because of a depressed immune system, or a lot of stress that reduces the body desire on a cellular level to fight back. There could have been an emotional component. There also could have been a cancer gene in his DNA pool. And it could have been all of the above.

All I can say is that I’m shutting up with my theories. There is no room for them in my heart-felt wish to just be available to someone who’s going through their process of believing they’ll beat back this destroyer of lives.

After having watched Y move through his own stages of denial, negotiation, anger, acceptance and release, I can only hope others will find their peace with this challenge. I hope I can be there and offer support as they make up their minds about what they want to do. I can cry with them if it helps them. I can offer an opinion regarding the long term effects of chemo and radiation and holistic treatments, if they want to ask me. Maybe I can even suggest they make peace with whatever they have become afraid of or wish they could have changed about their lives.

I know for certain I will respect their path with better care and refrain from putting them in some kind of box that serves only one purpose: of making me more comfortable rather than assessing and assisting them with their needs.