I’m flying to Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has already metastasized and he’s in the Cleveland Clinic, waiting to be admitted to their hospice program. Ken turned sixty-nine in April and is two and a half years younger than me. My neurotic reaction is: That’s not fair. I should go first.
My friend D.G.
Myers published the final post on his Commonplace Blog, “Choosing life in the
face of death,” two months before his own
death from cancer on September 26, 2014. At the time I read it with admiration.
It was characteristically learned, loving and blunt. Now I read it as a sort of inverted
self-help guide. I’m looking for answers to such questions as: What do I say
and not say? How can I help? How can I ease some of my nephew’s burden? How can I stop thinking about myself and my
reactions?
At the time
of his diagnosis -- Stage IV metastatic prostate cancer -- David was given
three years to live, tops. He lived another seven. David writes:
“[D]enial
and despair are merely refusals to accept the responsibility of finding, under
the sign of death, a new purpose and meaning to life. Denial and despair are
rejections of what the great American Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor calls ‘one
of God’s mercies.’”
A decade
later, David seems to hear my questions:
“We who are
dying need from you what we should be demanding from ourselves—responsibility,
honesty, the courage to face reality squarely. It matters less what you say to
us than how you talk to us—face-to-face, as Moses spoke with God. And after
all, who knows but that you might be the one, by your kindness and faith, to
give us the strength to choose life in the face of death?”
7 comments:
Dear Patrick, I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. Thank you for the honesty of your post. I read DG Myers last post for the first time. I know that what he wrote there will be a great help to you, and perhaps to you brother. Best wishes, Arthur
Dear Patrick, thank you for your blog, yours and DG Myers's blog have long been my favorite literary blogs, along with Steven Pentz's. I am founder and CEO of a cancer therapy company, Angiex (www.angiex.com), and we have a drug in its Phase 1 clinical trial that may be universally efficacious for all solid cancers. If your brother is still healthy enough to travel and participate in a trial, he should get in touch with us. You can reach me through the contact form of the Angiex website, or by email to info@angiex.com. Best, Paul
Oh Patrick. Sorry to hear about your brother.
I am currently reading the poems of L.E. Sissman (because of reading about him here) and wondering how I will react on whatever "bad diagnosis day" might lie ahead for me. I hope I will have those around me who will help me to do so in a worthy way. I am praying that you and your brother will draw strength from each other.
So sorry to hear about your brother.
I am so sorry to read this sad news about your brother, Ken. Your presence will be a help to him and his son during this difficult time.
When David Myers posted what you have quoted here I printed it and occasionally reread it. I had prostate cancer myself, but it was found and treated before it metastasized. And I lost a younger brother to cancer.
Here is something from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I have found true for me and a help when coping with grief.
“Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bond between us. It is nonsense to say God fills the gap; God does not fill it, but on the contrary, God keeps it empty, and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other even at the cost of pain.”
If there were an atheist's/agnostic's equivalent to the word Godspeed, I would type that into my comment to your blogpost about your brother's predicament, and your decision to be a part of his parting ways with you and with the world. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a brother like you.
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