I’ve come to know that this cancer isn’t my only burden. After the diagnosis I was still a mother, a daughter, sister, lover and friend. There were still papers to write and dishes to wash. Although it is much easier now my thoughts aren’t occupied, only occupied, by cancer. I have plans. I have dreams. I have goals. Some have changed in respect to what I can and cannot do. Where I can and cannot go. But I am still very much alive and involved and in motion. Not nearly as rapid but in motion just the same. I am moving towards a destination which may have been into a harder mark to reach but it’s still there. Waiting for me. It’s still there.
My life is a journey. Cancer does not end the journey. Cancer didn’t end the journey the day the doctor told me and in the seven or eight or is even ten months which have passed, I have still been very much engaged in things other than this disease. A terminal diagnosis does not mean that the disease can be the only cause of cessation.
On May 31, 2013 I was in my apartment when a tornado touched down and took off the roof. My son, Grant, was at home with me. We held each other, arms and legs wrapped around and through arms and legs, as our peripheral vision caught, from ten feet away, the roof of our apartment being lifted, piece by piece, up and off and away. My journey would have ended if I had gone up with the roof and the cause would not have been cancer. Just the same as if the tornado had taken place before my diagnosis. It’s possible, on any day, at any time, I have learned, to be free from this life and have the journey end. It’s not necessary to form a bond between the end of my life and cancer as there are too many other instances of exit.
I think the problem comes when we believe that life must have an average span. Seventy years old is old and I thought, again like most people, that there was an age at which death is acceptable. From my vantage point that thinking is ludicrous. Does the child of a seventy year old parent miss him any less than the child of a forty year old parent? No one can answer that question so the concept of dying too soon or before one’s time becomes one which is bound by very few facts. Especially when we say “before one’s time.” This implies that there is a guarantee on a certain number of decades. No human owns time so how can we say that anyone goes before his time? I don’t know. You see, the fact that I am no longer moving at a rapid pace physically does not mean that my mind is not active. Losing my ability to have a high energy level twelve or so hours a day for five or six days a week was at first, for me, a tragedy. I cried so many tears of frustration when I would grow tired after only being awake three or four hours. I have learned to appreciate those few hours, those quiet hours, as I can feel my spirit growing. Sad to say that I required a time out in order to grow up. But it’s true. I would have never come to this spiritual, emotional and psychological precipice if cancer was not a burden placed upon my shoulders to carry as I went on my way.
There are burdens we choose to carry and there are burdens, such as being very good looking, that we are given. There are burdens we can easily lay down and there are some which carry a lifetime commitment of service. Having children and accepting the role of mother or father is a burden of commitment. And the more I think about it I am starting to believe that marriage is also a lifetime commitment to carry or to assist in carrying all burdens. Now, I always believed that marriage was a sacred covenant between a man and a woman and their God. But I also believed that there were many reasons that the covenant could and should be broken. Not so now. I have been given, by my former spouse, assistance in carrying this burden. He can’t take the pain away. And he can’t eat for me or walk for me. But he does try to make me as comfortable as possible. He tries to take away some of the things I was carrying and as a friend he also helps me to decide what I can bear. If he stopped tomorrow I would not blame him. And even if he did stop I have learned a lesson of a lifetime and I hope to carry this lesson to anyone with ears to hear. We are, in the covenant of marriage, to assist each other. We are to sacrifice for each other and we are never, in callous disregard, to increase the burdens our spouse must bear. Whether it is an addiction or public humiliation or what we do behind closed doors, we are not to increase the obstacles placed in the way of our closest fellow traveler. We’re not allowed. It’s just that simple. Never.
