You People Are Amazing.
Saying thank you is hard for me. Not because I don’t feel grateful, but the opposite. Usually, I feel so excessively grateful, that any words I might use seem thin and flat, and I think the folks I want to say them to won’t be able to see through the thin flatness to the feeling on the other side of them. Or maybe it’s because I’ve used entirely too many exclamation points in my life—my whole life’s quota, really (anyone want to lend me some?)—and when you’ve gone to 10 on the enthusiasm dial too much, it’s hard to know how to dial it up higher so people can really hear, really know, how they helped you, what they mean to you.
But you have. Of all the surprises in the last 7 weeks, the nicest, by far, is finding out just how many incredible people I have in my life. Miles deep. I have been sneaky or lucky enough to worm my way into so many different communities and the lives of people who know just what to do and say in a crisis, or if they don’t know what to say, just show up, and look me in the eye, and cry if necessary, and let me talk about it without averting their gaze.
I think how lonely and terrible it must be for people who don’t have a big noisy family, and big noisy friends, and a huge-in-spirit, mature and flexible church family, at a time like this. How do people do this? Who do they call in the middle of the night, who can handle their anxiety when everybody has so much of their own, who can handle their fear of death when death is exactly what nobody wants to look at? But you do this, over and over.
The biggest gift you have given me over the last few weeks is just being able to stay with me as the unthinkable unfolded, quiet (or noisy and indignant, or ridiculously sarcastic) by my side. You haven’t run because you’re afraid it’s catching. There is that—even in our modern mind, the idea that cancer could catch, that death is infectious, because none of us really believes we will die.
The prayer vector is stunning! I’ve had emails from junior high and high school friends I haven’t talked to in decades—not just pat words of condolence, but real love and confessions of faith, or leaps of them. I’ve had emails from no fewer than—I’m just guessing—the pastors of 30 churches, saying that the people in your churches are praying for me. I got my teeth cleaned yesterday—something you apparently have to do before chemo, to reduce risk of infection—and now a whole dental office is praying for me! I went to get a last ceremonial eyebrow wax (sigh) before losing them for a while, and the waxer, herself a mother of three, is praying for me!
You’ve hooked me up with other cancer survivors, beautiful souls (future post!) or friends you just happened to have in the ER at the Brigham where I’ll go if I spike a fever, you have laid hands on me to heal, sitting at my back or cross-legged at my feet. You have filled our freezer, you have given us homemade soaps to wash off the hospital smell at the end of the chemo day, you have given us the restaurant gift certificates and the promise of date nights, you keep whisking the children away and making them laugh and distracting them from the skittish mood in the house.
You have gotten on busses to come take our family pictures before I lose my hair (let’s see if I can use this neato photo feature here: exhibit A).
You have offered massage, Reiki, chauffeur service, you have offered to come over early in the morning when we are trying to get out the door on time and help Rafe get his socks on when he takes 20 maddening minutes to do it (this is a labor of love, trust me). You have offered to match those socks on laundry day.
You have had a light touch with advice, especially advice about treatment, knowing I am overwhelmed with choices. Thank you.
I hope that you know that you have people who love you like this.
Some of them you know about, some are a secret. I don’t wish for you to get cancer, or something else that looks terrible on the outside, so you get to find who your people are, the depth of their affection, love, faith, ability to show up. Miles deep.
But aren’t you curious?
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