Robbie objected somewhat to my Dec 31st weblog entry about suffering vs pain. Her basic point was that since the medical stuff was not happening to me, it was important to consider how she and the kids were handling their maladies. She felt that because they were basically upbeat and positive despite the lifelong nature of their conditions, it made it lots easier for me to ‘not suffer’ and look at the whole year with a sense of gratitude.
It took a couple of discussions for all this to emerge, and rather than trying to figure it all out and respond to her, I just tried to listen and then asked for time to think about it and get back to her. We’ve done this a few times in this past year when she’s irritated about something and it’s generally been good for us. It makes it easier for me to just listen, without trying to defend myself on the spot or jump to problem-solving too soon when she just wants to be heard.
On Sunday, my friend David loaned me a book “A Man’s Journey to Simple Abundance” and on Monday evening I sat down to read a few chapters. The introduction cited one of the chapters as being about a husband’s reaction to his wife’s brain tumor. Once again, I was incredulous at the coincidence.
Anyway, it’s a story about how this guy’s wife beat breast cancer ten years ago. She then spent most of the 90s helping set up support groups and foundations for cancer victims, only to discover last winter that she had a type of malignant brain tumor that generally kills within a year. This book was published this past summer so it’s quite possible this woman is dead by now.
The point of this guy’s whole piece was gratitude, and this sentence jumped out and whacked me upside the head; “When people ask me how I’m doing, I can say I’m doing well because I’m inspired and empowered by how well she is doing.” He went on to describe how she continued to be upbeat and grateful for what good things she has in life, and that made it easier for him to be grateful for their time together, for the realization that “my marriage has been the single best thing I’ve experienced in my life.”
So I handed Robbie the book before I went to bed and said, “The guy who wrote this chapter about his wife’s brain tumor agrees with you.” She chirped, “Well, good!”
I’ve reread the chapter and I do see now how much harder it would be if my wife and kids were bitter or depressed about what’s happened to them. And I realize now that they deserve a lot of credit for this, and that I need to say something about it to them. I do have doubts now whether it would be possible for me to still “feel the pain without suffering,” or be grateful if they weren’t upbeat.
When my dad was sick and dying, it was hard for me in part because other members of my family were angry at him, plus he was pretty much unresponsive for the entire month it took him to die. But I just reread a bunch of my weblog entries during that month, and I do feel some gratitude for what I went through with him, that life helped me learn something that couldn’t be learned without the pain. And I realize that the inspiration to learn, to try to see, to understand, didn’t come from me. Maybe that’s what grace is. If so, I’m going to need more it of this year. Maybe I’m getting some right now.