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| Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Sir Galahad and an Angel |
Plus, since I'm not even a very nice person, I would probably find it a little irritating to listen to people who beat this thing when I did all the same things and didn't.
I think we'd both feel a little better if I just stayed away.
But, through the magic of the internet, I can go online to a stage iv breast cancer forum and read from women who really get how I feel. Women who understand that there's a sweet spot to be found between other people saying, "Eh, aren't you done with cancer yet? Any one of us could die at any minute, you know," and "Oh my goodness, you're going to DIE!" Who get what it feels like to wonder if that ache, cough, or dizziness is just stuff or the sign of increasing cancer. Who also deal with the conflict between wanting to prepare your family for a possibly very bad future and at the same time wanting to give them the gift of normalcy and not spend whatever time you have together filling it to the brim with worry.
Stage iv cancer boards are a good place to hear about other people's experiences. To see that other women with similar disease characteristics are on the same treatments, have similar side effects, and, thankfully, some have had success with those same treatments.
But, the problem is, the sword cuts both ways.
As often as I find hope that helps me in this still new cancer diagnosis from women who post about the months, years, even a decade or more that they've been living with stage iv, that's not the whole story. There are always other women who are are doing badly. Women who need their cancer-eaten bones pinned or replaced. Women who are in pain that isn't very well controlled, even with heavy duty painkillers that leave you loopy and feeling like a stranger to yourself. Women who are out of options except for hospice. And, because hospice isn't for people who are getting better, there are always posts in honor of women who die.
Cancer is serious business, you know.
There are some times when I avoid sad posts. I know what cancer does and some days I don't want to hear it. It's not an honorable reaction, I know, but sometimes going there is a little more than I can deal with. I guess I'm trying to spare myself the same reaction I would give others by showing up at a lower-stage support group, I just don't want to be reminded of how this thing can go.
But there are also times, especially as I get more and more used to being stage iv, that I'm glad there are people who post when someone has become "an angel" and glad there are women who can share how sad it is that someone else has been lost to cancer, how sad it is when a woman we have gotten to know and shared experiences with has passed on.
When I was young, we went to a church that had lovely* stained glass windows of angels. At some point, my mother told me that the faces of those angels were the images of the real-life children of the donor who had died. It seems certain people in the 1970's found the idea vaguely sacrilegious. I don't know, I'm willing to let go of taking the gesture as too much of a doctrinal statement. To me, then and now, it seems like a lovely, poetic gesture. A touching way to cope with the impossible sadness of losing that many children and a way to use art to help give them the legacy those poor children weren't here long enough to earn for themselves. I guess I always was a little maudlin.
I don't know what those children died of. I have a vague recollection that I might have been told it was measles, but I don't remember for sure. The church was built in the 19th century. There were a lot of things for children to die from back then.
Because dying young wasn't so uncommon back then, I suspect there were plenty of people around at the time who shared the understanding of what it was like to live through something devastating like the death of so many children, even without having internet forums to help them find each other.
I also suspect that to some parishioners, especially in the 1800's when the death of children was not uncommon, those windows served as both a momento mori and a "but for the grace of God go you." It was a time where untimely death must have seemed a lot more random and a lot less avoidable than we typically think of it today. I wonder if it seemed like a good thing to be reminded of something so sad? Was it an opportunity to cherish the time while they had it? Or would they rather not have had their fears stoked with such a reminder each and every Sunday?
Today, we live in the age of "10 things" and "top tips" lists that seem to promise health and longevity. I think sometimes it catches us a little off guard that bad things can and do happen anyway.
Maybe that's a good thing. I can't quite decide if being reminded that untimely death can still be random and unavoidable is helpful or not. As much as I don't want to inflict myself on support groups or be reminded in the forum of how mean this disease can be, I still feel like it's important to understand the full range of what this is really about. And yet, the sword does cut both ways. You can't talk random and unavoidable death without bringing worry and sadness.
I suspect if more people understood the randomness, there would be more understanding of how to handle things like this. But I don't know if that would be a good thing or not. I'm pretty happy with untimely death being fairly uncommon in this time and place. And I'm obviously not at all eager to take it on myself just to be a helpful reminder for others. I'd much rather be a case study in defying cancer and living a long darn time, thank you very much.
But maybe more understanding that today is what we have, that now is the time to plant morning glories and half-double pink petunias, to laugh with my family and cherish all the sweet little moments of normal, isn't such a bad thing. Maybe we can strike a bargain, I'll tell you all to remember that people die and cancer is bad, you can all take it to heart and live in the moment, and I'll do the same thing for the next 30 to 40 years. Deal?
Now we just need to find a way around the random and unavoidable part.
*I've tried a number of times over the years to google up pictures of those windows, but so far no luck. Someday maybe I'll drive down to Rhode Island on a Sunday so I can have another look. My memories are weak, but in them the windows are sublimely lovely.
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