Late Saturday, May 30th I was lying in a rather large hospital room between the hours of 2:00 am and 3:30 am, contemplating my recent diagnosis of lung cancer. I did not go through the Elizabeth Kubler Ross five step grief dance and it did not even seem relevant actually. I had a diagnosis, its name was lung cancer, and it was mine. Not yours, not something I could shovel under the rug so I could deal with at leisure or not at all, not something I could dole out and have someone experience it for me in a proxy like manner. No, this nasty diagnosis was all mine.
But how the hell is one to deal with something this big. I don’t feel persecuted, nor do I feel that the divine retribution committee deemed fit to finally get my attention after all these years. Nope. This showed up with all the hoopla of an ordinary weather report.
In the semi‑darkness of the room my minds eye formulates a large white vinyl steamer trunk. It’s not reflecting light, it’s emanating it, the white surface concentrating the reflected white light and choking out any color that may temper its intensity. The steamer trunk, in all of its horrible brilliance, is trimmed in highly polished brass adding to the reflected light. There are no visible catches, latches, locks or lids to be seen.
My diagnosis had morphed from word to image and I continued to stare. It wasn’t a hallucination or a sudden burst of psychosis, I’ve had plenty of them, it was just a mental image that I could neither touch nor manipulate, I could only stare and ponder it.
In the silence thoughts of my father came to mind, which I do not have very often. He was a man of few words, a limited amount of gestures and smoldering anger that barely hid itself behind the surface, but in 1985 he was diagnosed with the same disease and after a seventeen year hiatus I was willing to see him and clear up some unfinished personal business that had been long over due on my part.
The first time we met was quite the shock. He was happier and more content that I had ever remembered him being. His conversation was animated as was his spirits and he talked about his impending death with a clear sense of what it was going to be and how it was truly supposed to be that way. We parted as friends for the first time in our lives.
Six months later he is in remission and I decide to visit once again, expecting more of less the same, or shall I say someone in an even lighter shade of mood than six months ago. Not to be. My dad is in a profound depression, like the ones he had when I was eight years old and you had to remove the lit cigarettes from between his fingers at 3:00 am because he would fail to notice and then go back to the next room in the railroad flat I grew up in and hope he didn’t light another. Tenements built in 1900 of timber and tar burn much faster and brighter than the Xmas trees I would find in June and torch with my friends and I had no desire to burn along with the building. Inevitably he would either get another beer and light a cigarette or he would slump along the kitchen wall and fall into a dreamless, REM free sleep. A few months later he was out of remission, happily residing in a hospice and was pronounced dead in fall of 1987 much to his liking I’m sure.
By now my steamer trunk is fading from my mind’s eye and my thoughts are gathering once again. I tacitly acknowledge the debt I owe my father in instructing me on how one can die with some sense of satisfaction and composure, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stare life in the face with a profound depression, something I’ve implicitly known how to do since I was extraordinarily young. No, this diagnosis required that not only I react differently, but that I take different action to address it.
The trunk is gone and I’m pondering how does one truly deal with this differently and slowly my mind informs me that I now get to do things differently. I cease to criticize, I allow people to love me in way I never had before. The arms length approach is no longer going to work, the fear that I am in so indebted to the universe and I don’t need another upside down loan from someone merely offering me love and support will have be given up in its entirety.
“Well Backmann,” I say to myself, “nice sentiments and possibly good copy but it still doesn’t answer the question of how to do this.”
The next thing I know is that there is a gratitude list scrolling through my head. Not a list of what I own, or the great set of tunes I get to listen to on demand or the comfortable condo that is truly a home or any of the physical things I would normally associate with a list of items to grateful for. It is a seemingly never ending list of names of everyone that has ever contributed to my life in a meaningful way. Friends, lovers, enemies, some dead other alive, yet others state and whereabouts unknown, nor is this scrolling like some end credits at the end of my life. It is for all appearance sake a dynamic, vibrant and growing list of life itself.
Instead of the usual Hollywood “Finis” I get the message that I am to be of service.
The next morning I make a decision that this process of living with cancer will be blogged, my wife is informed that whomever she cares to tell of my cancer is her business and her business alone, and, and this is probably more important than I realized at the time, anyone who expresses a desire to visit is more than welcome to come.
My spiritual decisions have always been just that a decision. I certainly don’t know how to implement it; I just decide that I am willing to be different. The cancer calling card was my next spiritual instruction and my decision to do it differently was choice that has set in motion a full week of inspiration from family, friends and acquaintances I barely knew cared enough to notice.
This spiritual journey moves forward, merely by my deciding to move with it in whatever shape, form or direction in may go in.