Summer is Coming Again

Today we did a three-mile walk with hills. We were huffing and puffing but moving at a pretty good pace. As we made the turn to come back home I said to John, “Do you remember the summer after your first surgery; you could not walk from our front door to the car.” And he remembered. It’s a shock still, how that cutting into flesh and being sewn back together took away so much strength so fast. He looked the same but could not walk at all.

Now we hike and do hills and push each other on.

That summer of chemo changed so many things. No movies, no malls, no grocery stores. Even a tiny bit of air-conditioned air caused excruciating pain and frozen breath. He couldn’t even look in the refrigerator so I had to learn to cook. That was one of the gifts of Cancer Land—I became a cook. But that summer when it all began was so shocking and crazy.

I think about this today as we hike and run and dress for a dinner out. So many things changed. We grew from them and with them. I know that isn’t everyone’s path. Cancer can end a relationship as well. It can be too much. And no one gets blamed for that. It can just be too dam hard sometimes. So what I feel tonight is gratitude and grace.

Day of the Dead

Today I celebrate Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. It’s not a holiday I grew up with but one I’ve borrowed from the Southwest and Mexico. It’s become one of my favorite holidays partly because it’s a good spiritual counterpart to Halloween. Except for the candy, October 31st doesn’t leave much for grownups. Being scared of goblins and ghoulies lost its sway when I got old enough to lose people that I loved. The dead just aren’t scary in the same way anymore. In fact, I’d welcome a visit from some of them.

That’s what Day of the Dead is about. There is a belief that on this day the veil separating this world and the next is thinner and so it’s a time we can be closer to those that we love who are dead.

Day of the Dead celebration centers on rituals for remembering loved ones. We can visit in our imagination or feel their presence. It can mean prayer or conversation, writing a letter or looking at old photos. The tradition that I use includes making an ofrenda, or altar, something as simple as putting photos and candles on the coffee table and taking time to talk and remember. We also have chocolate as a symbol of the sweet and bitter separation from those we love.

A ritual is a way of ordering life. Whether Purim or Advent, hearing Mass or saying Kaddish, small ceremonies help us sort and reframe our memories. When someone dies the relationship doesn’t stop, it’s renegotiated, literally re-conceived.

This isn’t a very American idea. Culturally our preferences are for efficiency and effectiveness; even with grief we use words like closure and process.

I remember my frustration when I was grieving and well-intentioned friends would suggest I move along in my process and quoted Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. The simplified version of her theory lists stages: Denial--Bargaining--Anger--Depression, and Acceptance. But it’s false to create an expectation of five discrete steps. This listing implies order and that a person can move from point A to point B and be done. That makes grief seem like an emotional Monopoly game where you go around the board, collect points and get to a distinct and certain end. This false notion of linearity is apparent when we hear people judge someone who is grieving, “Oh she missed the anger stage”, or “He hasn’t reached acceptance yet.”

I always thought that “losing a loved one” was a euphemism used by people who were afraid to say the word dead.. But after losing my brothers I know that lost is the perfect word to describe the feeling that follows a death. Something just out of reach, still here, but also gone.

Though they died several years ago my feeling about my brothers is that I have misplaced them; It’s that sensation of knowing that my book or that letter I was just reading, are around here somewhere…if I could just remember where I left him.

I think this is why we can sometimes be so hard on the grieving, and why we want them to go through those stages and be done with it. We love closure and things that are sealed and settled. But death and grief, for all their seeming finality, are not as final as we would like.

So tonight I’ll make cocoa and light candles; we’ll look at pictures and tell stories and we’ll laugh.

The root of the word grieve is heavy. We carry our dead as a cherished burden. Death ends a life but not a relationship. Who would want to close the door on that?

Flashback

Today I drove to Hudson, New York for a business meeting. I followed the directions and pulled into the parking lot where the meeting was being held. It was an oncology center!

I signed in at the lobby desk and was directed to the conference center on the second floor. I passed through the clinic area and saw the patients and families waiting. Patients were being called in for blood work and to have their ports checked. It came flooding back.

The waiting rooms. Waiting to be called. Patients tired and anxious. Families with their reading bags and knitting and cell phones. The stress on their faces. Greeting each other with careful nods in that small community that a chemo waiting room becomes.