About six months ago, my friend came to work complaining about continuing chest pains and shortness of breath. She left in the late morning/early afternoon to get checked out by her doctor. She never came back to work.
She was diagnosed with cancer, her second round of it in her lifetime. Childhood cancer wasn’t enough, as the great cosmic absurdity of life decided she needed to go ’round with it a second time, currently in the prime of her life. She is 31.
In the months since her diagnosis, I’ve often selfishly used her situation as a mirror to my own life. I think about the conversations her and I have shared over the years, discussing our futures, ruminating on our mistakes, setting up courses we expected our lives to take. We used to talk about 5 year plans like they were a guarantee. They are not.
I remember a watching a clip of Stephen Fry being interviewed by an Evangelical, or maybe a member of the clergy, someone vaguely religious and I think offended by the idea of atheism or agnosticism. He asked Fry, what if you die, and you find out there was a God all along, what would you say to him?
I remember his response nearly verbatim. Bone cancer in children? How dare you! And I thought about how right this was. I am a person of faith in the sense that I carry faith in other people, faith in a sense of universal goodness, and an unconscious, collective understanding. I was raised religiously, went to a Catholic college, contemplated entering a religious lifestyle many time. I have three bibles in my home, and I study them, as I find the concept of religions – all religions – fascinating.
I do respect those who would respond to Fry’s response with an answer of it’s all in God’s plan or these things happen for a reason, we take lessons away from these experiences. Well bully for the living, as they get to take away experiences and the children die of bone cancer. Faith can be a wonderful sense of comfort, and a prism or set of parameters for which an individual chooses to observe and experience life. If that works for you, then that is wonderful, and as long as you remain kind and respective to those who respectfully share an opposing belief, then we’re all fine here.
But I’ve witnessed people tell my friend we’re all praying for you, you’re going to get through this. No. Simply, no. If prayer is an actionable step that you take to help alleviate stress, anxiety, worry, and fear, that is excellent – good on you! But to entertain the idea that your prayers will be the cure for inoperable cancer, then you are living in a land of make-believe. Prayer will not cure her cancer anymore than my meditations will. Your presence, your emotional and (if you can swing it) financial support will ease her burdens, but she carries cancer inside her, and you can’t pray that cancer away.
I can hear the people in my life calling out hypocrisy. My friend and I attended the same Catholic college, where our foundress, Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, was canonized in 2008. In order to be canonized, one has to preform 2 or 3 (my Catholicism is rusty) miracles, posthumously. One of Mama Teddy’s miracles was healing a blind man after he prayed at her casket. Another one was shrinking a tumor in a woman riddled with cancer. That woman prayed, and she was healed. And how wonderful that is.
Believing in miracles keeps the spirits up and hope alive for people. I don’t scoff at that. But when I see someone telling my friend, who grows ever more ill and debilitated, that prayer is what she needs – I am disillusioned to the idea that their prayer offerings are for her benefit, and wonder if these are the things people tell themselves to alleviate their own fear and helplessness.
I don’t blame them. When you realize that nothing in life is guaranteed: not five year plans, not success, not life without great challenges, not tomorrow, not today…when you face the realization that there is no guarantee of a higher power, an afterlife, or some eternal payoff for living a certain lifestyle – then we are left with the absurdity of our existence. That we’re here, and we’re not sure why. That we die. That the time between birth and death is sometimes very short, quite long, but rarely ever peaceful or without great trials and suffering.
The only comfort I can find is that in between the hardship and the pain, we find love, and we find friendship, and we connect with others who are on this insane and poorly planned path with us. And we stumble along with our arms around each others shoulders, and we take turns carrying each other, and sometimes we leave good soldiers behind, but we keep going for the sake of moving forward, and the hope that one day it all makes sense.
Since she got sick, I’ve stopped looking at life as a series of five year plans, and I try to focus on today, which is incredibly difficult when you feel like time is being handed to in in teaspoons. But I’m grateful for this teaspoon, and I’ll carry on hoping I’m fortunate enough to receive another, until I run out and my time here is spent.