Trouble me

Is it true that I'll have my very last chemo in two days? I am trying to diminish the numbness of one toe by showing my feet and toes as very tiny and insignificant in this photo. Is it working?

Doctors ok chemo five minutes before it starts, so I'll know then.

My body tells me it is so. It tells me this with a restless brain that shivers inside its cracked skull. It tells me this with a sickening stomach that suddenly doesn't want to function. It tells me this with a large lump in my throat that doesn't want to swallow it. It tells me this with a physical feeling of dread lead in my veins, lead in my heart, lead on my tongue coating it so that the taste of oranges or cheese or coffee or peanut butter or apples is leaden and coated with slimy mercury that rolls oily around and sticks in my teeth. My body is mounting a revolt, even the thought of the upcoming date with poison, which is just there right under the surface, ills me.

I think yes I'll have chemo #6 (PLEASE LET IT BE THE LAST IN THIS LIFE) on Thursday.

 

"Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while."  ~Author Unknown

 

And some to run amuck.
 

People wonder if it is offensive to talk to me about others they know who have cancer, or have died from it, or are going through really rotten stuff. Yes it is ok. Will I be offended? Never. Why/how?

A roundabout illustration follows:

We, as a people, love to be offended. Why? Maybe a target at which to direct horrible fear helps. Example: I am restricting my use of the word retarded. It causes outrage among lots of people that take offense at it. And yet…I confess, I sense a tiny bit of delight in those who are very outraged by this word. Or another word or words. Or are outraged at horrible things that have happened to them by bad people or drunk people or evil people or horrible luck. I have thought about this a lot. I wonder if being outraged is kind of fun and kind of useful. (Yes of course I have raged myself). As a way to think about something. Like maybe something other than whatever is right in front of you or what is your real problem. And I think that the outrage, the offense, is something that you take (it is not given to you) – you pull it out of the other person, or the word, or the idea, and you pull it out and bring it to yourself to drool over, and to eat, to caress, to ram bloody into your mouth to eat and consume and then eyes blazing with your precious fury you are fueled with that bloody raw meat of outrage and you can then turn and spew it all over those who have outraged you, you can scream viciously into their faces, you can spit the raw stinking outrage right back on them, onto their faces, in the firelight. And you are joined by a mob of people who are cheering you on, because you are right, you are righteous in your anger and hatred. You have a license to kill almost. You have a loophole in the social contract, for a minute you don’t have to be nice or kind or polite or normal – for that minute that you hold the outrage you get to rant and rail, to yell and call names, to denounce, to call another, even a person who you have never met or heard of, you get to call that person a wrong person. A monster.

But I don’t think this works. I think that you took that outrage, you took that offense, because you wanted it. You wanted it because taking that busies you, occupies you, secretly thrills you because it takes you away. Away from maybe the real thing that freaks you out, the real awful thing that hurts you. A terminal illness, a horrifically unfair life, terribly difficult child, a horrid spouse, the fact that you don’t have the love that you want, a loss, a pain, a missing. And you don’t have to take that offense, you can say no thank you I have had enough. I believe that offense is taken, not given. Old fashioned phrases back me on this: "Please don’t take offense." Take. But anyway I never really had to come up with this argument, it was just there for me to observe. I don’t know why I think this way.

Let me tell you a story. This is how I feel and maybe it will make sense to you. My brother Max was run over walking in the road and killed by a car driven by a drunk driver when he was 18. I was 19, only 16 months older than him, and I was in college, in 1981. A long time ago. A long time ago, but. But I think about this all the time. Every day, every hour, every minute and second of every day and the night, underneath the life I live of conversation and actions, runs a stream of Max. It is there like a river. I dream of a river running under the house, under the street, under the fields. The event happened and it is with me. But this event of the driver that hit Max, another boy driving a car, the young precious boy, only 17, driving I imagine gleefully, with beer in his veins and maybe Foreigner on the radio, or Van Halen, this event is not made of outrage. Not any. The event of Max’s death is made of sadness. Mixed with pain, and beauty, and memory. Of music and laughing and mountains and comic books. Conan and Superman, first issues, big thundering pow pow blam blam fists punching on the page in dots. This even is made of love and sadness and sadness and sadness, carved out of pain and gut wrenching sadness, like a sculpture, gleaming and huge that I see and feel with awe and fire. But no outrage. I have no anger or outrage or fury or discomfort with drunk drivers, with the boy who was driving that night.

 

At the moment of impact, even before we heard about what had happened all of the outrage instantly vanished, it popped out of existence. My parents, my sister Annabelle only 14, and I never felt it. Not an iota. We had no room if we had wanted to, we were too full of love, in the form of agonizing open heart surgery with no anesthetic, in the form of the shock of being dropped into a well from a thousand feet, in the form of having a vacuum cleaner hose like on a cartoon put up to your mouth  and the air sucked out of your lungs. But we did not think “we are too upset to be angry” or any thing like that thing. We just never, not ever, not once, not for a second, not for a what if, not for pretend or real, we were never outraged or mad at anyone. The car that hit Max, the boy that drove it, the killing crushing impact that flung Max and flung and crushed the life out of him, that took him from life to the stars, probably in the air on the way from one piece of asphalt to a dry and unforgiving strip of Texas weedy field – those moving parts and that person that was behind the wheel – they have nothing to do with Max. The moment it happened, they became removed, revealing in the light the loss.

R. B. (I will leave out his full name in case he wants it that way) was driving that car. He was 17. He was in my automobile mechanics class at Georgetown High School in 1979. He was just a tall skinny auto mechanicy guy who was in the background of my life. We moved to Georgetown from Boulder Colorado my senior year and I hated it. I am not mad at him. I was not ever mad at him. My mother was never upset at R. My father Ray was never outraged by him or by his being drunk or not, or by any person driving any car drunk. We do not represent mothers or people against drunk driving. In fact we forgot him instantly. We never noticed R. B. Now I regret that and I find he has entered the stream of my consciousness. He is in my mind all the time too. I wonder about him and I worry about him and I am so very sorry that this awful event happened to him and I forgive him, and people who drive while drunk or not have nothing to do with him and me.


Leila is my friend who helps me with writing. She is a writer and read over some of this before I put it up today. She is wise and she says "To remember Max with someone- that brings him to the present? Judaism says our immortality lies within the memories of people who knew us and who will talk about us. So you are welcoming-- inviting stories. They are what connect us."

 

I agree.

So how does this relate to me and cancer and stuff now?

 

Like this:

 

Brother

1. I'm deeply hurt by the loss of my only brother - all the time - will never go away

2. I deeply empathize with another person's loss when they tell me about it

3. Their loss and my new sadness or feeling about it doesn't make my pain about my brother any worse - or better - it's different

4. So if you know of my trauma or loss, don't be afraid to tell me about yours 

 

Cancer

1. I'm deeply affected by the fear of cancer and the terrible sickness that I feel when I take chemotherapy into my body. It has hurts me mentally and physically and continues to do so. It has robbed me of time and comfort and teaching and taken me away from things I love. It has upset my whole family and my friends. It's awful. It freaks me out and scares me and hurts me all the time and is always on my mind, under the surface. I hate it.

2. I deeply empathize with any other person's experiences of suffering from cancer or from any difficult thing. I care.

3. Their/your experience and grief, if I hear about it, will make me sad and upset. Like if a friend tells me about their illness or that of someone they know. My new sadness or feeling about it doesn't make my hurt about my cancer any worse - or better - it's different. It won't scare me or make me more sick.

4. So if you know of my trauma or loss, don't be afraid to tell me about yours.

 

Does this make sense?
 

 

From "Trouble Me" - by Natalie Merchant

 

Trouble me 
disturb me with all your cares and you worries

Trouble me
on the days when you feel spent

Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden
when my back is sturdy and strong?
trouble me

 Speak to me
why are you building this thick brick wall to defend me
when your silence is my greatest fear?

Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden
when my back is sturdy and strong?
speak to me.

 

Let me
have a look inside these eyes while I'm learning
please don't hide them just because of tears