No Thanks.
I am writing thank you cards today.
For most of the last 10 months, since that fateful chest x-ray that turned up my tumor, I have been the recipient of the unimaginable largesse of a wide variety of people. Every day, I got gifts in the mail, hung on our front doorknob, shyly tucked into my hand at church coffee hour.
Here is a verbal snapshot, from a single day early in my chemo career: organic goji berries, a redtail hawk feather personally foraged, a hand-knit prayer shawl, a three-month subscription to Netflix, and homemade chocolate chip cookie dough. That was in ONE DAY, people.
Here is a visual snapshot, of my windowsill where some of your gifts live:
and a pic of my friend Megan’s scarf collection, thoughtfully donated when I first went bald (with Carmen for scale).
The pace of gifts did slow, thank goodness. Not to be ungrateful. But, really, it was hard to keep up. I decided early on that I couldn’t write handwritten notes to thank people, but I would try to write an email to everyone who gave me a gift. I’m sure I missed some. If it was your gift I failed to acknowledge, know that it did touch me.
When I started naming chemo VIPs at the end of blog entries, I made a conscious decision not to name material gifts. Partly because I didn’t want to create a hierarchy of gift-giving—some people don’t have the time or means to knit me a prayer shawl (and never fear, because I have four! In different colors—you must have consulted each other ☺). Partly because I didn’t want to make those who hadn’t given physical things to feel that their contribution (of prayer or presence) was somehow less than. And partly because I didn’t want to encourage you to give me more things. As wonderful as each individual item was, there was a period of time when the gifts were overwhelming.
Now that the chemo journey is almost over, I can say thank you. I can say thanks not just for the thing but for the thoughtfulness and impulse of generosity behind your gift; your desire to connect with me and help me heal and offer me some comfort to attenuate the harm that chemo was doing to my body and our family; the labor of your hands that either made the gift or made the money to buy the gift.
What I especially want to say thanks for is staying with me this whole time. It’s quite amazing really. With the po-mo American attention span what it is, with all you have going on in your own lives—fresh tragedies and sorrows crowding mine out—it is stunning that the casseroles keep arriving every Sunday. That the cards, blog comments, email prayers, doorknob guerilla gifts, keep showing up. It is really YOU who keep showing up. So thank you.
But I want to say one other thing, in case you ever go through a similar tribulation, and people overwhelm you with their kindness, and you start feeling, dare I say, burdened by the need to feel sufficiently, publicly grateful. When I was feeling that way, I told my spiritual director. And he told me—I will probably get this a little bit wrong—that monks in the order of St. Benedict, which is known for its hospitality, are not allowed to say thank you.
That’s right.
No thanks.
They are not allowed to say thank you, because the offering of hospitality is a rule; God wants us provide shelter and comfort and care to one another. So receiving comfort or hospitality from another doesn’t indebt us to them in any way, and therefore doesn’t require a payment in the form of socially-mandated gratitude.
Back in the Days of Many Gifts, I found myself wishing I had a handler, someone with much better handwriting than mine, and a more linear sense of the progression of stationery-stamp-mailbox, to write fervent thank yous to people. I didn’t know how to sort out the people who really secretly wanted to be thanked, who needed that thanks, from the people who are ok just knowing their gift may have helped in some way.
Now I find myself wishing we could all be the kind of people who know that No Thanks is necessary; that we are called by God to offer what comfort we can, when we can, and we are bound in inextricable webs of care, invisible to our eyes. And we might never get a beautifully written formal thank you for this or that kindness we did, but we can be satisfied knowing we have entered holy orders, we are lay Benedictines going about offering comfort and not needing any but God’s recognition for it. And maybe not even that.
I’m off to write those cards now. I’m only writing about seven. All to staff at Dana Farber. Here is the card I bought my oncologist:
I was so excited to buy fresh stationery for this task last week, because—as sad as I am to see our relationship change—the act of thanking them is an important ritual that not only lets them know how incredible they are, how their kindness and skill has contributed to my healing, but also because it marks the end of my treatment, and my freedom to move into the future.
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