Breathtaking
I looked over at my wife. Our eyes met, and we took a collective deep breath before I rang the doorbell. This was going to be hard.
We were standing at the front door of the home of a good friend. He and his family were going through a difficult time. His forty-year-old wife had been diagnosed with brain cancer five years earlier. Her therapeutic course was a typical cancer story — surgery followed by traditional chemotherapy followed by rounds of recurrences with requisite increases in tiers of therapy. Unfortunately, her cancer was unrelenting and stubborn, oblivious to her surgeons and oncologists’ efforts and deaf to the prayers of her family. He sent me her most recent MRI. Regrettably, the images corroborated the bleak prognosis.
We were there that morning to attempt to provide a brief moment of solace and comfort. We wanted to make sure our friends knew we were there to provide support, and they would not be alone through what was sure to be a heart wrenching few months. Perhaps we could give some respite through discussion of spirituality, faith, and communion.
I had not seen my friend for a while due to the pandemic and anticipated he would be worn down by the grind of sorrow and grief. I was surprised when he opened the door with his usual warm smile and booming voice.
He was not haggard but looked surprisingly well. We followed him into the living room, and he informed us that his wife had just gone to the bedroom to get some rest. I assumed she was very frail and weak and likely spent most of her time in bed. We learned he had been furloughed from his job due to the pandemic and was currently not working. Ironically, he said it was a blessing not to work as it allowed him to care for his wife. While he was giving us an update on her condition, she rounded the corner of the room and greeted us with a smile and kind words. She was weak but managed to walk across the room of her own volition, sat in a chair, and joined us in conversation. They both spoke in a shockingly matter-of-fact manner about the prognosis and likely course without any apparent sadness or dejection — no watery eyes or cracked voices.
How could this be?
The sword of Damocles sways above our heads, but the certainty of knowing it will drop in only a matter of weeks to months should be overwhelming and crippling. It would fill me with anxiety, despair, and regret over all that I would not be able to do or experience. Yet in this home, it was not. Elisabeth Kübler Ross’ five stages of grief popped into my head.
Denial. They are clearly in denial, I thought. This was the only way to explain their otherwise unexplainable equanimity. Yet the more I listened, it became clear they did not deny the natural course of the disease. They were well aware of what was going to happen. So rather than trying to understand why, I decided just to listen.
He spoke of the four best choices of his life, with the first being to marry his wife. They spoke of their lives together, not with melancholy but with appreciation. She talked of her faith and the inevitability of death, and how she was not resigned to her fate but instead had found peace with it. They showed us a full binder of handwritten notes they had compiled based upon scriptural reading. I figured it was something they had recently compiled while desperately searching for some explanations to life’s cruel twists. Flipping through the pages, however, it dawned on me that this was several years in the making. Together, they read and discussed age-old questions, metaphysical and material — of this world and the next. It was a testament to their love and understanding of each other and their faith. This was the answer to my question. They were not delusional or confused. Instead, they had achieved greater clarity and confidence in their belief of transcendence due to her diagnosis than most will achieve over multiple lifetimes.
We often speak of faith, providing support during periods of crisis, but those conversations typically occur while not in a crisis state. Mike Tyson famously once said, “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face.” Spirituality and transcendence are often discussed in coffee shops and university classrooms (and hazy dorm rooms) but rarely practiced in the real world. To see such poise, stability, and strength in the terrible crucible of cancer was simply breathtaking. My friend then said something that I will never forget — “I am so fortunate to be so rich.” Was he delusional? No. He was genuine. But how? Because he measured wealth with a different metric than most. Before we left, he took me to his garden and picked some fresh kale and cilantro for us to take home. I insisted that he not, yet his grace and compassion would not be denied.
We walked to the car carrying a large bag of organic kale and cilantro. To say the visit had not gone as we thought would be an understatement.
The cancer was unrelenting and had taken so much of her and him. It had broken her body, but it failed in breaking their unyielding spirit and faith.
His figure became smaller in my rearview mirror as I pulled away, and we quietly drove home. We were humbled and deep in thought. We had gone to inspire, but we were inspired. We had gone to provide strength, but we were the ones given strength. We had gone to speak of faith, but we had our faith reinvigorated. I pray that if hard times come to pass for my family and me, I can marshal even a fraction of their strength and understanding that pain is inevitable, but suffering is truly optional.
Addendum
My friend passed away on December 26, peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by her loving family. Her funeral was a celebration of her life, love, and light. We are sad and grieve because we miss our friend, wife, mother, daughter, and sister, but we find inspiration in her strength, faith, conviction, and clarity of purpose.
Dr. Kashyap Patel, Cardiologist
Atlanta, Georgia
