Inside / Outside: Living in The Real World With Grief
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 11:25AM | by Otter 
It's raining in New Orleans today, little thunderstorms springing up and shattering the silence and then meekly dissipating into a gentle sprinkle of rain.
Keeps things cool.
Keeps things lush.
Inside the classroom, fluorescent lights and scuffed dingy reflective tiles ensure that Learning Can Go On.
My students, having (for the present) let off enough indignation at the unfairness of the exam, have turned their attention to completing it. A spot check over their shoulders confirms that it's fair, that they are hanging themselves based on what they have failed to learn, or distinguishing themselves by showing they have learned it.
I'm edgy, even snappish. The class clown keeps asking questions she knows the answer to, and I had to tell her to "Just write the damned exam." The rest are a little more aware that something's up, and I've tried to bring my patience to bear with them, answering little questions ("Should we skip lines?" "Is it okay to say 'black' or do we have to write 'African-American'?").
Gross Pathology: Adenocarcinoma, The EnemyOn my web-browser I have an array of tabs open that tell me a lot about adenocarcinoma.
I've read most of it many times before. Little details seem important: more cases in developed countries, for instance, suggesting it's something in the lifestyle. Tied to a toxin produced in the bowel that might be bound by higher fiber diet. Amost always fatal after Stage IV.
I've read all this in the last year. I know all this.
And I'm not sure why I'm reading it now. It's time to close those tabs, and turn to the remaining time. It's time, I think, to stop fighting an unstoppable enemy, though my family will have things to say about that. We'll confer. My sister is a fighter: she'll have ideas. My brother is a dreamer: he'll have hopes.
I'm not sure what I am: a little bit of both, I hope. But I want to spend the time well, whatever we choose to do.
Rain On Hospital Window, 7/14/11
A couple of students want to turn in their essays and go, and they catch my eye with the unasked question there. They're warned by my own stern look: "Proofread again. And again. And again. Get it right."
This is my inner state, and it keeps breaking out on them, even when I don't speak.
Get it right.
You don't get another shot at this.
Cancer, Family in Cancer, Personal Reflection, Relationships, Suffering 
Reader Comments (7)
Just a note to let you know how much we care. I wish I could offer more.
(((otter)))
No, you don't get another shot.... but this course is about so much more than the final. You have an entire lifetime of loving your mom, of honoring her, of sharing laughter, tears, joys, struggles, words and silences. You have her wisdom stored in your memory, The imprint of her character is all over the man you are today, the father you are to your children. Faith, hope and love... these things are eternal. There is grace for her, and your family, to walk through this process. My prayer for you is for peace.
A caveat to my last comment... and I'm fine if you don't publish this... but if you feel the need to ask her forgiveness for anything, do it now (or as soon as she's recovered from surgery enough to be lucid). Give her the chance to verbalize her forgiveness and absolution. It will bless her, and maybe you too.
Thanks, Stephanie. I think we're already good that way.
I keep writing and then deleting, because anything I say sounds trite. Keeping you and your family in my thoughts and prayers, and hoping you find some moments of peace inside this storm.
You have the ability with your writing to speak to the core of my being. Although I am told that grief is pretty much the same process regardless of its reason, I have no idea what it is like to face what you are facing.
When I read what you have said over the past weeks (and longer) I am tempted to think I can feel your pain as if it were my own. It is not. I have my own pain, from a completely different source, it's not the same thing as yours, and yet what you write resonates in my own soul.
Thank you, Ron. In some ways, grief is like being human: the universality of it is in a sharp paradox to its individuality. I think nobody "has more grief" than humanity... Maybe just more causes to exercise it.
It is very, very hard on survival, though... I want to do nothing but lie in bed or run away to the mountains. But if an afterlife does not exist, humans would have had to have made it up to account for the way in which our minds expect someone to speak, and do not find her there anymore, with no hope that the absence is temporary, but still seeming to be there.