June 1, 07
(This piece was written thirteen years ago before my first or second brain surgeries. and nine years before the cancer I now live with moved in to stay.)
Humor, Life and Death
A Fictional, Non-Fiction, Reality-Essay, Short Story…Not.
Angle of view, distance of time, tension for too long contained–so many geometric shifts of mind can contort any emotion into its opposite.
On June 7th of this year, In Omaha, Nebraska, I stood backstage, preparing to deliver a talk entitled “Lighten Up and Live” before an audience of over 500 cancer survivors and their families. That presentation was an installment on a debt that will never be fully repaid. Because, for more than a decade, it has been my volunteer work with cancer and Aids patients that has, literally, granted me a new career and a constantly renewed sense of joy in being alive. As the Master of Ceremonies began to tell the audience about the afternoon’s program, my mind wandered back to how my debt to these survivors had been incurred.
In 1978, while I was researching material for a television special on the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, a young cancer patient turned my world upside down. That boy, I’ll call him Todd, approached me one day at a gathering of young cancer patients, their families and friends.
I had drawn away from the group to be alone on the porch and ponder a disquieting question: How could those people–all of whom had one problem that made my difficulties seem incidental–maintain such a sense of compassion, joy and hope? It seemed “unrealistic” to me. After all, I knew that the world was a dark and dangerous place. I had learned that lesson early, and had nurtured it for more than thirty years. I hadn’t noticed Todd approaching me, and was startled when he tugged on my jacket to get my attention.
He was very frail, completely bald-headed and his eyes were focused on me with a disquieting intensity. He made me very nervous.
“What do you want?” I asked in a tone more irritable than I intended.
“You don’t look to good,” he said hesitantly, “you wanna come in and sit down?”
I was stunned. This kid, who had obviously suffered a great deal in his bout with cancer, was worried about me? He thought I didn’t look good?
(It didn’t occur to me until years later, after I had learned more about cancer treatment and patients, who because I was bald, he thought I was a cancer patient, too.)
Before I could respond he took my hand and almost whispered, “Do you hurt much?”
Well, I lost it. I started to cry because I thought that, somehow, this child had seen my soul, and knew it was maimed.
As I pretended to cough and try to hold back the tears, Todd said, “It’s okay, I was scared in the beginning, too. If you want to talk to me or my folks, we’re in there by the fireplace.”
He let go of my hand, patted me the back with his small hand, grinned and said, “Hey, we’re here to help each other, so, lighten up!” Then he grinned and left me
Lighten up? I asked myself. Lighten up? How could he say that? What did he know that I didn’t?
Well, it’s been nearly fifteen years, and I’m still learning from people like Todd. That’s why, whenever my schedule permits, I attempt to repay the patients, their families, hospice volunteers and professional healthcare providers, for the lessons I continue to learn. And every time I speak to people like the Survivor’s Day group in Omaha, I learn even more about the enormous strength, tenacity endurance and, yes, even humor, that it takes to cope with and frequently survive the threat of cancer.
Since 1983 I have built a business with a worldwide corporate clientele that is based on what I’ve learned from my hospice experience. So, my hospice friends, clients and co-workers not only changed my life but, through our business, they have affected the lives of literally millions of others. That is why my thanks can never fully be repaid; and, that is why I went to Omaha for Cancer Survivors Day.
The Omaha event was sponsored by a mutual effort of local area hospitals. Those hospitals had set aside their competitive interests to help cancer survivors celebrate and communicate a message of healing and hope to thousands of others, a message was put succinctly by Ms. Pam McCoy when she was honored with the Spirit of Survivorship award prior to my presentation.
“Just because they say you have cancer,” she said, “doesn’t mean you have to die.”
Pam received the award, among other reasons, for her service to fellow patients. During her radiation and chemo treatments, she noticed that some people were missing appointments because they were too tired to drive to see a doctor. While still coping with her own disease, she applied for a job driving a van for Bergan Mercy Hospital that takes patients to receive treatment.
I wasn’t surprised by her altruistic efforts. As I stood backstage, I recalled that the people who seem to do best when coping with illness, are those who pay as much attention to helping others as they do to helping themselves. I would learn that when we reach out to others we are affirming the value and sanctity of life, as well as manifesting the respect and love which nourish us all when things are difficult. And, through her volunteer work, this woman was accessing another common denominator of many survivors–involvement in a community of understanding peers who share common problems and solutions. Pam’s next words completed the picture of survivors that I had seen evolve over the years.
“I believe we’re called here for a purpose,” Ms. McCoy told her audience. “But before you can help anyone with anything, you have to be able to laugh at yourself. Life’s too short to be on a serious roller coaster all of the time.”
Since the children and their families at the Center for Attitudinal Healing had embraced me in 1978, I have continued to see that sense of purpose, that ability to make their experience count for something, as a hallmark of survivors. And, through it all, I have seen a remarkable capacity for humor underscore a renewed sense of joy in life–even in the most difficult situations that some patients must confront.
As the audience rose to offer Pat McCoy a standing ovation, I remembered literally dozens of moments encapsulated in my memory of how many cancer patients use humor to disarm their fears, to find absurdity in the things that threaten them, and thereby gain control. And, I thought of how I had come to Omaha to return that gift to this audience of survivors.
Oh, I wasn’t going to teach them how to tell jokes–that’s comedy, and comedy is an art form I had learned that humor was a set of developed skills which were common among people who remain creative under pressure; skills that were shared by those who survived unbroken by the crisis, chaos and change of human experience.
I certainly didn’t intend to tell them that humor skills would make anyone live a long time. After all, if humor made us live longer, where did all those bitter, nasty people we know come from? Besides, I had seen some of the most upbeat, joyful, humor filled souls I knew die. But, they had died in ways that magnified and uplifted those around them.
The applause ebbed as Pat returned to her seat. I heard someone begin to introduce me. Quickly, I ran through the elements that Pat had reminded me of which seem so common among not only cancer survivors, but among those who survive the multitude of trials we will all face in some way.
1) They are actively altruistic. They spend as much time helping others as they do attending to their own needs; they exhibit an avid desire to make their experience count for something.
2) They are sustained by a higher power of some kind, some sense of their part in a Divine Mystery that defies human comprehension.
3) They have, or develop, a vivid imagination that allows them to literally “see” their way through difficulty, and achieve a most powerful strength of unreasonable, logic defying being.
4) They are involved in a community of individuals where pain, hope, problems and solutions are shared.
5) They discipline themselves to focus on, nourish and sustain their sense of humor and joy in being alive. They learn to take their disease, problem or job seriously while taking themselves lightly–so, they never become their problem.
As the MC continued my introduction, I realized that one young boy who reached out to me in Tiburon in 1978 had illuminated all five of those elements.
When I walked out on stage to speak to the Cancer Survivors Day group, I realized that just being there was going to give me more than I could offer in return. It’s odd really. A debt that grows larger and less burdensome every time I make a payment. What a gift.
© C.W.Metcalf 6/15/92