"Lucky" is an interesting word. You'd think it would be used mostly by people who have trouble-free lives, but I've never heard it used as often as I have in the chemo ward in the Princess Margaret Hospital. There you have over thirty men and women sitting in comfortable chairs attached to chemo-drips, and each one has a story to tell about how lucky they have been. Yes, and so they are. Some chairs are side by side or almost facing each other. People love to exchange stories about their experiences with cancer.
The lady next to us one day was a woman probably in her mid-forties. She wore a piece of cloth tightly fitted to her head. The colour — dusty blues — must have been chosen to go with her beautiful colouring, which was probably heightened by the chemo she was receiving. Her father and sister had both died of cancer not long ago and she had been genetically tested — it was not very clear how that worked — her English was good but with some accent. I pieced her history together partly from her conversation with Rod and me and from phrases she used when talking to the nurse:....avoiding lymphodema....surgery on both sides. It sounded like the double mastectomy had been preventative surgery. A couple of times she said she did not want to be dead in 6 months, as, apparently, her sister had been after diagnosis. And yet this woman found a reason to consider herself lucky: she lived in Canada and received excellent care in an excellent hospital. And, she was alive.
Another day, the woman across from us spoke loudly about a long chain of events which led to her early diagnosis and so, her hopes were to be cancer-free. Everyone wants to know how your cancer was ‘caught’ --- which is considered lucky in itself. So far I’ve never heard anyone ask, “why me?”
Rod will soon be having his 6th round of chemo treatment. So far so good. This chemo is supposed to be much more virulent than the one he had 5 years ago, but so far, it seems much kinder, and Rod is very cheerful. He had expected terrible reactions, as last time, but so far there are none -- not even nausea. We hope for the best. The last bout of chemo bought him 5 years. Hopefully this will do the same.
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The dark night of the soul. How many should one have in one life time? Do you count only the darkest one, in which case you don’t really know which it is until you are about to die--- and then, would you care about comparative darkness? Obviously you can’t have too many because that would render the expression rather lame, as in, “oh yes, I had one of those just last week.” You might think my darkest hour was when my child lay close to dying. It was a frightening time. And yet, it was not one of my darkest hours because I did not believe that Valerie was going to die. I asked Dr. Palombino what her chances were. Dr. Palombino was a visiting doctor from Argentina, there at the inner city hospital in Philadelphia, a city where I knew no one. My daughter was lying on an operating table, under bright lights. It was well after midnight and Dr. P. and her colleague had been working to restore her chemical balance for hours. Her body looked so frail, emaciated, and her teeth were covered with a greenish gunk. That’s when I asked my question. And Dr. Palombino did not back away from it: her answer was: 50-50. And my reaction to that was: Thank God! I was afraid she might die! 50-50 meant to me that she would survive. It’s perhaps the only time in my life that I have seen the glass half full. That was that. To tell the truth, I didn’t really hear her answer until 20 years later — and only then did it occurred to me, ‘Oh my God, she could have died!’.
Thinking back of that time — maternal instincts defined me. A woman with children has the strength of a lioness. I would claw back my daughter from the brink of death. I had carried my sick child from doctor to doctor in that alien city, until someone finally thought of the simple test that would identify her illness. At the same time I was carrying another life inside me, my other daughter. She was providing me with mysterious warmth and strength and resilience. Love, strength, purpose. It was the one time in my life I knew what I was born to do. And with Dr. Palombino, luck was on our side.
My darkest hours, I think, are the times I have lost faith in myself — lost my way, perhaps. When my first marriage fell apart, the rupture led to a lot of self-doubt. I was not lovable. I was not useful. I was without talent or purpose. Oh, who can remember the weight of all that hopelessness! Who can remember just why they felt so helpless, curled up on the floor, holding their belly, wailing. I was so lost.
I turned to the I Ching for direction. I took the whole business very seriously. First of all, I bought a book which taught me the procedure and the frame of mind that was required. I read the poetry that went along with the various hexagrams, and I found it very beautiful. I threw coins instead of yarrow sticks, but this was within the limits of acceptance. And I made a vow that I would toss the coins only that one time and not repeat the procedure in hopes for a more favourable hexagram. You know you have reached rock bottom when you know you will not cheat, no matter what. If my intentions were not pure, there was no point to the exercise.
How do you signal the pure state of your mind when you come from a background where there is no ritual and no tradition of prayer? And to whom, or what, do you make your vow? How do you know you are not subtly bullshitting yourself when there is no one to observe? My Jewish friends speak of a covenant with God, describe how they wrestle with him. Before Him, their soul is naked. There is no possibility of bullshit. Well, however it happens, encountering your naked self is a sacred event.
I threw the coin. I drew the hexagram: three solid lines above; three broken lines below. Hexagram 12. The hexagram is named “obstruction”, or “stagnant” or “selfish”. Earth below; heaven above. Well, I was gobsmacked. So, the I Ching did not give me direction, but it did give me a precise location. This was my one and only throw and it nailed me.
It didn't occur to me to ask how this information could help me. In retrospect, was I not the cartoon of the man crawling on hands and knees through the desert, weak with hunger and dying of thirst? He reaches a signpost, looks up and reads, "You are here: X".
Nevertheless, at that moment I believed I was facing the only solid, undeniable truth. (Though you might ask who put the signpost there, and why?)
The ‘selfish’ interpretation I discounted without hesitation. If I had been any more selfless, as a wife and mother, I would have been either a robot or dead. Stagnant. What a word! What kind of swamp-creature had I become? Obstruction was everywhere. I had to assume it was self-imposed, for I was no one’s slave by law. I must confess the poetry of the I Ching is so ambiguous that I felt free to relate to it according to the thoughts it triggered in my mind. Superior man? Inferior man? How does a late 20th century woman relate to that? That is not meant as a criticism, but reflects the limits of my creative thinking as well as my unwillingness to invest more time, and perhaps a degree of arrogance in thinking I could make my own poetry from there on.
But the experience, the inner bargain, not to repeat the process in hopes of a better hexagram, had been sacred. The temptation do do so was pretty strong, I can tell you, for I did not like the look of the bald face of truth staring at me. As for the bald truth, well, you recognize it when you see it. There is nowhere to hide.
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