Two Constants

I've been thinking about birth and death lately.

This weekend I went to a salon and had my head shaved to a very tight crew cut. It was a hard weekend and I was exhausted from treatment #2. On the bright side, I was pleasantly surprised by my appearance. I look like a dark-haired version of Sinead O'Connor. And you never know what shape head you have until it is revealed. My head actually has a tidy little shape to it. So there is that. On the down side, I feel stripped. I no longer get to hide this disease from myself or from others. And that brings me to thinking about identity.

Three years ago, I was a married woman who was primarily a stay-at-home mom (though wisely, I always had something going professionally). When my ex-husband left, he stripped me of that identity. It was upsetting and disorienting, but it didn't take long before I was able to craft a new one. And of this identity, I can say with a whole heart, that he did me a favor. Now, I'm a proud, single, full-time working mom who loves the work of her life. I make all the trains run on time and it's kind of fun and interesting to see how well I do it.  I'm trying very hard to remember this;  that losing one identity can lead to a new one. While it was painful to have it ripped from me, it turned out all good. I no longer live with or minister to mental illness of any kind. Once I fully let go that old life, a burden was lifted from me. This left me with new energy to pour into more fruitful and rewarding things. It's so hard to remember but, in general, where there is loss, there is often gain. Sometimes it can take patience and creativity to find that gain, but if you look hard enough, it's usually there. Right now, I'm mired in the loss of my old identity as somebody with no health problems whatsoever (and only now do I realize what a tremendous gift that was for 42 years). And I may need to fondle this loss until I don't have to anymore. Only on that side will there be the possibility of gain.  And I feel impatient.

When I was first diagnosed, a friend suggested that this tumor and its treatment is going to force me through a cycle of death and birth. First we kill the cancer and then we birth a  woman who is free from the ick of the last few years. There is something about this that makes sense to me. The end of the my marriage was traumatic. Since then, the work of keeping what feels to me like a healthy distance between me and my ex has been equal parts demanding, tedious, and odd. The diagnosis has changed all of this. I no longer think about him with the intensity or even the frequency that I once did. So in that sense, there has been a death, and as these things go, it has been a tremendous relief. And I somehow know that when I am through with my treatment, I will figure out a new solution to managing that relationship that requires far less heavy lifting from me. I don't know what the solution will be or when even I will have the energy or the emotional wherewithal to employ it, but I know it will be waiting for me when I am ready. And that is the birth part.

I've learned that the first 4 treatments are the hardest and I have completed 2 of them. This means that I won't finish with this most bruising of sledgehammers until the end of July. It's like I'm standing by, observing the death of my short-term vitality in the service of my long-term feasibility. I feel myself slowing down and weakening. I now tremble in yoga. The bike rides that used to be a warm-up now kicks my ass. I have chronic indegestion. I have food aversions. There is hair on my pillowcase in the morning. This tumor is hopefully dying, along with lots of other things, it seems. And I'm trying to be glad about it but it's hard. It's also very scary.

A few years back, I heard a man give an interesting talk about how his knowledge of the cosmos reinforces his Chritian faith. One of the themes he returned to was the constancy of birth and death. He talked about nebulas which function like stellar nurseries in outer space. At some point, these newborn stars burst into space where they live a life whose length will be determined by circumstance (i.e. will it crash into another star) and by chemical composition. In other words, they will burn as hot and as long as their combination of gases will allow. 

In an interview with NPR, the late (and beloved by me) Nora Ephron spoke how little imagination we seem to have for our own deaths. I think she is right. I don't think we can really embrace this concept of the 'the end,' until we are absolutely  forced to. This might be just as well. In the meantime, what we can do is honor the little deaths that are an inevitability of living a life of any length. And maybe also, we can try and have a little faith that birth is inevitable too... that something new and good will be born if we just do the work grieving and then have a little patience.