Yesterday
I really wrestled with what was important.
Today, too. Every day is a juggling
game. It’s always a juggling game in
this house. How early to rise, do I dare
a moment in quiet before the earth shatters downstairs or someone forgets to
sort laundry or take out the dog? What
do I expose my kids to? Do we wrestle
with headlines or do we just stay put and wrestle with one another? How do we sort all the sticky junk that just
seems to ooze under the door and seep into our lives, even if we try to stay in
bed, hide under the covers, shut it out.
I awoke to a blood moon a few days ago. Some awoke intentionally. I awoke because a set of boots clomped down the hall outside my bedroom right before the early alarm went off. Toddler stirred, hubby got up and showered, preparing to stand at the end of the driveway past the reaching pines and witness a rare event. I stayed in bed. I didn’t really sleep, not much. Maybe it was hiding. The blood moon, its history, its connections, just reminded me so much of how dripping red our hands really are. Did I want to get up and see, see what I’ve witnessed before? Did I want to bring to the table the current, the tragedy, the burdens beyond my personal ones that are so hard-hitting at the moment?
Abi
said that she was glad we didn’t have news running on the TV 24/7 at our house,
glad that the fear factor was not living at our breakfast table. Nice to be a child when the monsters are
still locked behind the bedroom door and all you have to do is shut it and turn
on the lights and all’s well with the world.
It’s not that they don’t know. They
do. My kids can describe world events
with the best. They just don’t have so
many visuals to go with it. Tony and I
choose that. They know why Isaac and
Ishmael are still batting in the Gaza strip.
They, like much of humanity, can’t wrap their brains around Islamic
violence and even as adults we wonder why people can’t just be nice on the
playground and not bullies. They are
familiar the talking heads, leaders full of vitriol, lies, propaganda, and
sparse, occasional truth. They see the
roll of the impending plague.
And
then as I worked while sitting on the sofa, sounded out words while signing
another up for the SAT, it came bounding across my feed in all its ugliness and
deep sorrow. As if all the burying,
hiding under the covers that we’ve done is not enough. I have really been at the end of my tolerance
with a lot of issues, stupid insincerities that really get my ire up, blanket
statements spewed as news, opinion, even assumed truth. And this one story struck, snuck in my feed
and hit hard, hard enough that I wanted to duck that hard ball, hide back under
my blankets in my comfort and not expose myself to the haunting moon.
I’ll
put the link to the story at the end, but suffice to say, Brittany is 29, dying
of brain cancer, choosing to die, assisted, at her own hand. And the media, in full toxic pomp and
circumstance, trumpeted “choice” as truth yet again.
I
empathize. I get it. Only someone who has sat in her same shoes
could truly tiptoe with her at every single level, but I get it. Here’s why:
I’m
not sure Tony and I have published this picture before. I'd have to look way back in posts to be sure. I know we initially held it back to not
mortify our youngest children, but perhaps now it’s a launching pad, because
you see, we really don’t have a life or death choice. As much as I believe that there is a personal
God who is both in charge and orchestrates for our good in an
ever-compassionate manner, even if I did not believe that, I would know that I don’t
own it all. It’s not just about me. It’s not in my control no matter how much I
like to think it is. We can preach that
we are the world and we are a village, but when it comes to death and choice,
we preach to our end that it belongs to us, the individual. Not so.
It doesn’t. Death is not ours and
suicide is selfish, the act of a hurting person who fails to take the time to
see beyond herself. Each time we end
life of our choice, convenient or no, we snatch joy.
There’s
another story circulating, maybe not so mainstream, about a boy named
Shane. Shane was born anencephalic, a
condition where parts of the brain are missing, resulting in a very momentary,
short gasp of life. Shane’s parents,
knowing that they had limited time with him after birth, created a bucket list
of things to do with Shane while he was still in utero and celebrated every precious
milestone.
We
don’t own it. It’s most difficult to
believe when your baby Shane is on the altar, when you are wasting away moment
by painful moment with a dim prognosis, when you have few answers. But if we
can’t…if we can’t make baby steps toward hope and faith in the dark, when will
we? What is the point of our tossing around such words? Is there value in suffering if we toss in the
towel and give up hope of light at the end of tunnel, anywhere in the tunnel? I realize that it’s often used in a different
context, but what about the old adage, “no pain, no gain”?
I’ve
cradled a baby like Shane in my two hands.
I can only tell you that my momentary glimpse of that sweet child’s
face, fingers, and toes had not a millisecond of room for pain and all the joy
of the hand of the Creator. My own flesh
and blood has been there on the altar (see pic above) and though as a parent,
every ounce of you wants to snatch your son back, to spare your child pain, I
also have sat in that miserably uncomfortable ICU room chair, leaning against
the wall for days, with the very clear understanding that I was so totally and
absolutely not in charge of the outcome.
And there, not knowing the end game, the worst and most shortsighted
decision would have been to toss in the towel, call the game, walk out.
I’m
not patting my own back, but brave sticks by.
It may run to the bathroom for a few minutes’ breather, but it
sticks. Brave is the single parent on
the oncology unit, the father whose spouse didn’t stick when the daughter was
diagnosed with a terminal disease. Brave
is when the child sticks with treatment, day after day, month after month, not
for herself, but because to roll over and die and not give it a fair shot or to crawl in a pity hole would kill
her parents. Brave, in the depths of
chemo, built a gun table last year just to lay prone or lean his elbow up to
practice his shooting when he got to weak, because you can be too prepared and
you might as well enjoy each moment you have.
Brave goes to college as adult and finishes in spite of a history of
disease that can kill and a philandering spouse because your kids need to eat
and you want to eat many more meals with them.
I
know the moon’s red. I know firsthand
that cancer simply sucks and I know I tell my kids to choose a more appropriate
word, but there’s not one. I know I awake each day to grumpy people who are
late for class, to a toddler who wants me now,
to two cars that seem to always take expensive turns in the shop, to the
reality that we are still going back and forth with Asa, not so often, but
still, for a long time still, back to the world of oncology, to a house that is
buried from the past few years of our turmoil, to the fact that cancer could
ultimately cost my child his hearing even though he survived chemo. But it’s okay. It’s got to be. It’s okay to be, because the story is
collective and it’s not mine. And the
reality that I wish the Brittany’s understood, that it can, no matter how
ugly, even with a tragic ending, be called good.
Brittany’s
story
Baby
Shane’s story
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