What might you do, when “The Big ‘C’ “ cancels an actual character in your life?
How can we “cancierges” adapt to that absence?
When do we make sense of that smiling soul who we used to see?
How should we feel, when he or she is no longer there, in that same clinic, waiting room, or “chemo lounge”?**
I just lost my first cancer-patient friend. We only talked once. It was just last month in a hospital unit choked with mostly aged folks. But that former cancer patient and I been had spiritually connected many times before, over ten years, when I’d seen his bands perform, heard his playing on two other friends’ albums, and been blessed by his world-class gifts (on the Telecaster, that twang-slinging guitar preferred by many country music artists). Which is how I knew his face, sitting in the orthopedics unit, displaced from the fond, familiar comfort of a great restaurant/nightclub in our town into another city’s cancer hospital. There, in the orthopedics waiting room, I introduced myself, complimented and thanked him for his music gifts to me and others. Then, he gave me hospital navigation tips.
Cancer changes so much, too much, too soon. In the medical context, we were new fellow, involuntary colleagues. Back in our prior, music context, we had been “fellow church members,” forever nurtured and linked by acknowledging the joy, healing, and wonder that we both received from the sacrament of human collective music-making.
But this week, a dear friend’s email said that, this day, she was “remembering” him.
So, what do you do with cancer death of those you know?
Well, wondering why it worked out this way, is one way for concierge coping.
Internet research can enable and accelerate that internal action. Working the Web to discover “cause of death” is a reasonable task. (Maybe it will become a sixth stage in the Kübler-Ross model of grieving?) You can travel “virtually,” via computer and telephony, to try to tell yourself “what happened?” and why “ this soul I know?” (You could say, instead, “this soul I knew.” But why not allow yourself the present tense, not the past? Why not recognize the relief and reality of a dead friend’s ongoing memory and its nurture?) I did. And I found the obituary in a flash. But few text-clues were conceded there on “cause of death.”
So, then, you can inquire of others who knew the late patient. I did.
I emailed mutual friends: “Was it lung cancer? Was he a smoker?” (So many musicians and artists have been dependent on tobacco or other harmful substances, at least in prior years.) Our mutual friend replied the next day “He was a heavy smoker all his life.” So maybe gathering facts that differentiate the deceased from your loved one, can help you buffer your budding anticipatory grief. Determining disparate diagnoses and diseases might help heal and delay your worries about your loved one’s longevity.
What else might you do, after such a death?
Well, the Internet changes death and coping with dying too (not just research, education, commerce, travel, parenting, and everything else). You needn’t actually, physically travel to a wake or funeral service. I attended his passing from my residence. I honored his life, and in effect threw one more flower on his grave, by posting on a Web site obituary my memories of him and his spiritual gifts to me. (Many Web sites enable and encourage such supplemental readers commentaries.) It’s too late for me to carry my CD of his band’s music into the hospital and hope to find him and get his autograph on the liner notes in the jewel case, as I’d planned. Instead, I told his other admirers the story of his kindness to me and my cancer-kin when we were newbies, navigating that same hospital.
And some cancer caregivers may want to ponder the sacraments and views that various faiths proclaim about a person’s passing. Our Buddhist friends see death as an opportunity, to move up and away from life’s petty attachments and inevitable suffering. Listen to “/I’ll Fly Away/” and many other gospel and formal church songs for a joyous view of Christianity about passing. And now’s an opportunity to research the wisdom of many other religions. Ever wondered what went on, in “sitting shiva,” among Jewish friends? How does reading the Rosary relate to mortality for Catholics? What are the mourning practices of Muslim, Hindus, and other faiths?
Want to honor the fallen? Got cash? Consider donating to a non-profit supporting cancer research or education. Got health? Given blood lately?
Here’s the hard one. Do you disclose it to your patient? Does cancer-caregiving include delivering death-news? Is it wise or ethical to tell your loved one “Remember that guitarist guy and our chatting in that waiting room? He’s dead now.” Maybe so, if the deceased was your friend, and it helps for our patient to know your feelings now. Maybe so, if it helps you and yours to appreciate each day, or to acknowledge that another cancer sufferer has now gone away from an aching body’s pains. Maybe so, on the idea that “that doth kill another cancer sufferer, might make your cancer-burdened loved one stronger.” But maybe not, if that information would be another, internal burden for your loved one.
Be prepared, the Boy Scouts tell us.
**For you newbies, “chemo lounge” is too-damn-many recliner chairs all arranged in rows in a chemotherapy facility. It’s where many cancer patients go to have carefully-chosen, nuanced poisons slow-dripped into their veins, seeking later better health. Look for roll-up medication-infusion metal trees, hopefully eased with nearby televisions, recent magazines, power outlets (for personal music players and laptop productivity), and attentive, experienced cancer-specialist nurses. Those nurses often wear “hazmat” [hazardous materials] protective clothing to ward off a possible spill of ultra- acidic chemotherapy medication.
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