This evening I heard a ladies story who just recently has the experience of having to watch her brother go from top of the game health, to within half a year riddled with a rare form of cancer. The story was full of ups and downs, he started out with a rare, but treatable form of cancer, then after treatment instead of getting better, he got worse, a lot worse. To the point where the doctors basically gave him enough treatment to get him through Christmas, but after that, the hope of recovering to ‘normal’ was lost.
It was such a moving and sad story. I had heard bits & pieces along the journey, but never an end to end account. What compounded it more for me was her story had similar parallels with my story over the past couple of years. My father was diagnosed with just run of the mill skin cancer, but similar to this ladies story it wasn’t a simple linear story. At different times the doctors were saying different things, one week it was just a matter of surgery, treatment & have a nice life, then the next it was like ummm maybe your life is going to be a lot shorter than expected. Then good news, you’ll be around for many years, you just won’t be able to use your arm. At one stage he was all cleared, but then it came back. Just a really messy situation.
Hearing someone else share there story that was similar was quite profound to me. It’s as if there are others who are going through, or have gone through the exact same emotions and feelings. Yet at the same time, no body has ever felt like this before.
In a recent podcast that I’ve been listening too, Rob Bell has been working his way through the small book of Lamentations. A book of poetry that basically complains to God & blames everything on him. He brought forth this idea of grieving, particularly when things dramatically change. The obvious place to grieve is at the death of a loved one. But he goes on to say that a divorce can be just as painful. Or a loss of job, or friends, or tribe and community. You once had the same ideas and thoughts as these people, but you have learnt something new and they haven’t & a rift is created between the two, and you become disconnected.
What does cancer and grief got to do with each other? Although my father hasn’t died from his cancer, I feel that there is a certain emotional weight that I might have attached. Otherwise I don’t think that this evenings story would have been as impactful. Before the cancer saga my parents separated, another heavy emotional item, something that has weight attached to it.
I don’t ever recall my father crying. I can only remember him in pain maybe twice in my childhood. It wasn’t like he didn’t get the odd injury, it just never seemed to phase him. My mother on the other hand showed her emotions quite openly. I’m not sure which is the ‘correct’ way. But I would say, as a poor middle class white Australian male, the cultural thing is to not show emotion, and I am quite good at that. But I don’t think that you can have selective emotions. It’s more an all or nothing sort of thing. So if you start to block out the sadness, the happiness also starts to be dulled down. I find this a challenging issue. I feel that if I was Greek, it would be possibly more culturally relevant & acceptable to show the full range of emotions. (Maybe I need to find some Greek people to be friends with).
I don’t have an answer for how I should respond. I do however know I’m pretty good at being able to block emotion. Which is rather helpful at times. I get told I’m a claim, easy going person, whom nothing much phases. Which is true, because I don’t tend to emotionally react to things, at least not when I first hear about a situation. Why? Because on first hearing I’m only getting a tiny slice of information about the story & context. The question I ask myself is “what is the one peice of extra information which completely changes this situation?” Almost always there is something else to know, and getting upset without knowing it, just wastes energy, time & brain power.
So where is the hope? The annoying church thing to say, especially sma