Welcoming the Unwelcome
I set my book down on the table when my friend walked into the kitchen. “‘Welcoming the Unwelcome,’” she said, taking in the title on the splayed cover. “Why would you want to read a book like that?” She was smiling, but I could tell she wanted an answer. “Who would ever want to welcome the unwelcome?”
It’s a fair question, if somewhat of a trick. No one wants to get stranded in the barrow pit with a flat, be the last person chosen, stranded on the island of loneliness in an unhappy career or relationship. You don’t welcome a bad diagnosis or the crushing weight of bullies. Not even the most enlightened among us would welcome these reminders that we can be reduced to ash at any moment. That we are small.
We learn early in life – my friend, myself, all of us – to playact being “masters of our universe,” to persevere, to get back on the horse, to rewrite the script with a neat and tidy ending. And while developing resilience and balance in the face of adversity is important, it’s something we tell as the whole story, instead of the chapter it is.
I practice welcoming things that suck so that I don’t add to the suckiness by resisting whatever it is. It took me many years and many street fights with reality (PSA: Reality always wins) before I realized that knee-jerk reaction to my pain, usual in the form of denial, only added to it.
My older brother, Tim, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma when I was in my 20s. Our entire family, including his 6-week-old baby, sat around a table with the doctor while she gave us the facts. Cancer. Treatment, but no cure. Quality of life. Get things in order. “Three to ten years,” said the tired, kind doctors. “He can be there when his daughter starts high school.”
My brother turns 60 next year, and has celebrated not only his daughter’s high school milestones but her getting a doctorate in psychology.
Two things stuck with me from this experience. First, while I have learned, grudgingly, the freedom that comes from forgiving, I have never completely stopped resenting that doctor for sentencing us to decades of fear and worry. Tim still holds his breath when he sees a doctor, for any reason.
The second thing I remember is how much we all struggled with Tim’s catastrophic diagnosis. We went to battle, as a family, for years: against cancer, fear, human frailty, vulnerability, and at times, each other. My younger brother began losing and gaining weight, 40-pound swings in 30 days, before he was diagnosed with Graves’ disease. My older sister turned into a hollow-eyed shadow, consumed with worry and cooking meals to Tim’s specifications. I took my place in the order of things, relentless in the “fight,” floating between entertaining everyone with humor and buoying them with confidence I didn’t feel.
Many years later, a lifelong friend was diagnosed with melanoma at age 48. She did not get to celebrate her 50th birthday. In one of our first conversations after her diagnosis, she asked me, “Why does everyone talk about ‘battling’ cancer and annihilating’ it? I want to live. I want to get better. But staging a war on cancer, when the battleground is inside my body? I don’t want to do it like that.”
She found a path forward, a needle threaded with such grace that people around her felt the deep sadness of her illness, but often shared similar observations about being in her presence. As she metabolized the reality of her body’s diminishing vitality, she became the most fully alive person I have ever been around. She accepted everything – the pain, the fear, the ridiculous parade of wigs people suggested, the loving network of people around her. Something in her knew that fighting the horrible reality of the disease would rob her of the full experience of feeling deeply loved, marveling at the spring songbirds, her belly laugh in telling stories of the many things people did to try to avoid looking at her balding head. She went to the doctors’ appointments, she stayed interested in her work and ate well. She spent time living fully in the face of dying, something she reminded us we were all actively doing.
The first time a diagnosis rocked me to the core, it was really the way I met the news that created the anguish. My brother is alive, thankfully, but the scars from that time are thin cover for the brittle fear and rigidity of our response. By the time the next cancer wake-up call came, I had learned to save my energy for being alive, rather than fighting death. By allowing the jagged pain of the news in, I was also allowing myself to lean fully into the remainder of Shelley’s life, as she experienced it. I spent none of her remaining months fighting what was happening, which gifted me with one of the deepest periods of “presence” that I have experienced.
The last time I spoke to Shelley in her human body, she cracked a few jokes and talked about the joy of cinnamon rolls, her choice of a last meal before she could no longer eat. Of course there were lots of tears, too, but those dried up as she had the presence of mind to stare directly into my face, her body now really just the two brightest bluest eyes. “Is there anything you need to hear from me? Anything I haven’t said that you need me to say?”
I willed my heartache to soften, I steadied my breath until I could welcome, or at least not fight against, the knowledge that these were my last moments with this beloved human.
And by welcoming the worst of the unwelcome, I touched something bigger. Something death couldn’t take with it. Love. It was right there, by far the biggest thing in the room.
“No,” I whispered. “There is nothing left for you to do but fly.”