Dealing with Death’s Vortex

Posted on | January 24, 2015 | No Comments

What am I feeling when cancer and death are all around me? Within the last SEVEN MONTHS four family members and one long time friend have died, another is given just a few more months to live, and yet another is recovering from lung cancer surgery. Yes, all in the last SEVEN MONTHS. All of them are women; all suffering from cancer – some bone, lung, and breast cancer though not one of them smoked or worked in a hazardous environment. One killed herself because she did not have the emotional or financial resources when cancer returned the third time. The other women lived or are living out their life’s balance in pain, exhaustion, and determination. Friends and colleagues ask how we are doing. Are we managing? Has this touched us? One colleague said, “at least it’s not you”. Not comforting at all those rationalists. It’s hard to say how this touches my immediate family. My recently deceased aunts took my brother and I in when my teenaged parent’s marriage failed. One cousin died in June and we didn’t hear about it for months, and another person visited her friends (including us) without telling us it was her final tour. Shocked and numb is how we feel. Yet we are not the ones dying after all and so we reserve sympathy for the real sufferers. It’s hard to say I’ve had a bad day when someone you love is making her goodbye calls or your last cheer-up card is returned with Mail Box Terminated stamped on the front. I’m not asking for sympathy and certainly not asking for advice but what can I say when people ask how we are doing? What’s the truth? What words put it in perspective. The answer “fine’ is simply not appropriate. I check in with the survivors. The children, some grown, or the usually stoic people who are so angry and hurt need someone to talk to if they want to talk at all. Meanwhile, we try to go on with our lives with invisible wounds on the inside.

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• Dealing with Death’s Vortex
• Assessing Your World View- The Sand Castle
• Enlightenment and Addiction on the Internet: Neural Receptors Ramp Up
• The Perversity of Education
• Saul Bellow’s notion, “Warehouse of Good Intentions”.
• I Walk In Two Worlds But Neither Is Home.
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