Cancer, Introspection and Being a Witness
“If you get a diagnosis that is not what you want to hear, the tendency is to say, “Oh, my god! How did I get so far away from something I want so much?” And we say, it isn’t big like that at all — it’s just a series of little things. It is the, “I could choose this thought which feels good, or this thought which doesn’t feel so good. But I’ve developed a pattern for what doesn’t feel good. And so, it is the daily dose of not being in the receiving mode that keeps me not in the receiving mode.” And that’s all that it is!”
-Abraham-Hicks
I’ve been thinking a lot about the above as an old friend of mine has a cancerous tumor with lesions to the adrenals, lung and liver. It is easy to go into fear thinking when diagnosis shock sets in. For the past few weeks it is like he is living in a tornado, sometimes in the center where it is still and calm, but mostly at the mercy of the force of the winds.
At first I was compassionate and offered many suggestions with what I would do were it me……of course, in a situation like that, you really do not ever know what you would do and those words can come away sounding pretty hollow. Then, it was easier to avoid him by not calling or writing because I no longer knew what to say and I couldn’t follow where he was going or thinking, well, to a limited degree, I could, but I didn’t want to.
It has put me into a different mode of introspection about what is important in a single life and just how really isolated some of the bigger moments are. Even at the most intense of depressions all I could do was truly witness for him.
During several of my own deeper angst’s of last summer, no one could truly stand with me in my own truth, I was completely alone and only when I stepped into that was I able to feel the strength come bubbling up from within me……witnessing it all for myself.
He is a very brave individual and faces deeper shadows than most with humor and courage most of the time. I pray his Light remains a while longer but I am very blessed to have been a witness to some of his journey if he chooses to go.
Namaste, Jon
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Dear Sue and Everyone I guess
I think what you have just said about my journey (and that is how I see it and not a diagnosis with a pre-determined result) is very honest and open. I’m glad you told me on the phone about the blog thing, or I would not have read it or commented. So first I will comment on the blog thing. Is it just me, or do others see time speeding up, to where we don’t seem to have as much of it as we used to? It’s kind of like the quick shops that get put out on the heavily traveled roads and get a lot of hits. Put them one block away, one click away and few bites huh?
Since I am the subject of this blog, let me tell you about time—————-why am I at a loss for words? I guess time is the problem as Eckhart Tolle would say. I don’t know how much I have left. The oncologist gave me a relative figure. To some of you it would scare the crap out of you how little it would sound like, but the truth is,none of us know how much time we have. Sitting in the waiting room, I noticed an old antique dealer I have known and done business with for years and waved at him. He came over and sat down and we chatted about the business and then he mentioned another older dealer and his passing and I nodded “yes,” I had read about old Ervin. Then he asked if I had heard about Stan from Beatrice who was also a dealer. Stan had always struck me as a young man in his 30′s or 40′s, slim, healthy looking and to many of the dealer’s chagrin, usually the top bidder on all the finer quality antiques. He keeled over the other day from a stroke.
I was called in to get my blood pressure taken by this bouncy little nurse that should be on a sit-com. When I came back my friend Toni (who volunteered to be my advocate with the oncologist) was waiting. I told her about Stan, she said “that’s the way I want to go, fast.” I nodded my assent, but then I had to add, “but not now, not today.”
Sue you are right about my mood swings and there are times that I feel at the center of a hurrican, the momentary calmness that only the now will bring, while the past carnage is testimony to earth storms and the future winds threaten our earthly sanctuaries.
“I thought I would be stronger than this,” I have told myself during the panic attacks and depression and the notice I take of the long hours I spend in bed, but I’m also surprised at how calm and grateful I am for everything at other times.
I guess I have learned that I don’t get to choose when I’m a coward or when I am brave. The old saying, “you don’t get the courage to do something you fear doing, until after you have done it,” sticks out.
All I get to do is show up, feel my feelings and try to tell the microscopic truth.
What do you tell someone who has just dodged the ultimate bullet but is still walking around in “no man’s land” where the shrapnel is till flying about or someone else who is being sent into the face of machine-gun fire?
My friend Betty had a heart attack and survived, then she had a couple stints put in. Told me she was living on borrowed time, I told her I knew the feeling.
But it came very clear to me when I imagined it, how costly her passing would be to me. I told her that I would not like a world without her in it.
Sue, we have known each other a long time and gotten close enough to hurt each other and so I think I can say with authority, I would not like a world without you in it. You have been a blessing in my life and there has to be hundreds of others you have touched that need to tell you the truth, that there would be a giant hole left in their lives without you.
So for myself, all I ask is that I have enough time to show all those people out there who need to hear it how valid and important they are to me and this planet and that I spend as much time as I can lifting others who get pulled down by the leg sucking mud of conditioned thought and emotion. It’s not easy being a member of the human race, it’s so easy to get caught up in the game and when it comes to wisdom, well folks, talk is cheap. For me, the only wisdom I have achieved has come from personal experience and disease has taught me so much about what I am, what I thought I was, and what I want to become.
And most of the time these days, I don’t have a clue about much except I have faith that I will be shown the way and it has been a great ride, so I have no complaints.
I will say this much with a smile, people do treat you nicer when they think your time is short. I know I treat Betty better.I really don’t want to loose her. I wonder if we all did that,(show poeple that we don’t want to loose them) what it would look and feel like? JB
Jon,
I am glad you wrote.
I am a mother of 4 children and one who is a kidney transplant. He needed surgery in the womb to get him to birth. He was born 2 months early due to the surgery. Only to need more surgery at birth. We were told he wasn’t going to make it and took him home to die.
Well I am very pleased to say he is now 17 years old.
I shared one of my kidneys with him at age 3. He has declining function now and is need of another.
The emotional roller coaster is getting a lot easier.
As a person who strives for balance this has been a difficult task but I have had a lot of practice.
I am so blessed.
Lisa
Sue, this is the first Blog I have interacted with, I really don’t know if I am doing this correctly. It might be a good way to communicate. Joanie
Jon,
I woke up with in the middle of the night reviewing what I had wrote to you. I certainly did not convey my thoughts to you the way I wanted to.
Somehow, I thought if I did not tell you the details it would lessen my words.
I did not give you enough credit.
I have thought about you many times since yesterday and I know you will bring glory to your story we call life.
Lisa
Dear Lisa
I loved your story and was starting to write you a reply, but ran out of energy and decided to do it today.
In my comment tonight to Sue’s entry today I talked about decisions I had made long ago that have brought me to the place I am today. I talked about fighting cowardice all my life and when I told spirit that it was free to rip from my grasp anything i held onto that stood between me and my soul’s highest purpose, it might have been the bravest thing I ever did. I thought about you when I said that, because I have had abandonement and betrayal issues with my mother for many years, always looking for the mom I always wanted in the women I courted, actually looking for the perfect model in all women. I have since gone through the levels of foregivness, then understanding, and finally gratitude to my mother Anne who died prematurely when I was in Navy bootcamp. She had been betrayed and abandoned by her family at age 6, so she had major issues and little psycological help in the 40′s and 50′s to deal with her own post traumatic stress disorder. I am at this moment grateful and proud to have been her son and ask her foregiveness for all the blame and resentment I sent her way and how i used her as an excuse for the abuse I perpetrated on others in my lifetime, especially women.
You are a brave and loving mother for what you have done and continue to do for your son. What you do for him, you do for the whole world. I feel honored to have been addressed by you and feel very grateful to have met you here. After reading your reply I said an immediate prayer for you, your son and your family and right now I am saying another.
Somehow I feel that the challenges we go through and openly sharing that with others as we attempt to become more conscious of our soul’s real purpose here, is helping to heal ourselves, others and the entire planet. We are doing important work and meeting people like you is one of the gifts I have recieved from that brave decision I made way back when. Jon