Tuesday, 17 June 2008

• The Gift of Cancer

  As far as headlines go, this one is by far the most oxymoronic I've ever come up with.  Cancer, a gift?  Clearly only someone with a delusional mind and a cancer-free body could suggest that this archenemy of all of us is something that could be celebrated and appreciated.
  
  I am no stranger to cancer even though it has yet to invade my body.  My brother-in-law Emery died of liver cancer at 32, leaving my sister with a 2-year old and a 7-month old and without the love of her life.  Melinda later was diagnosed with breast cancer, which ultimately invaded her bones and finally her brain before it finished her off.  My 85-year old dad is still alive, even though lung cancer robbed him of 1/3 of his right lung and Non-Hodgkins lymphoma has reduced this once-strapping fellow to a shadow of his former self.  And not yet two weeks ago my 82-year old mother was told she has pancreatic cancer.  So while I have not had cancer, my family has been tormented by this scourge of death.  I don't know what it's like to have cancer but I do know what it's like to love someone who's been given this most-dreaded of all diagnoses.
  
  My mom's cancer diagnosis hit me particularly hard because we're the most alike in my family.  Our being so close was one of the obstacles I faced 30 years ago when I felt God was calling me to uproot from NoCal and move south for seminary and who knows what else.  As much as it pained her to see me go, Mom gave me her unconditional blessing when I left, not knowing when I'd ever be back.  That was 1978 and it took this horrific diagnosis of pancreatic cancer to make me realize that I've been gone three decades!  Over the course of those years, I didn't always make it back to Sacramento every year.  I started thinking that I'd probably been with Mom then less than 30 times since 1978.  Maybe more like 20 times?  Twenty times in thirty years is more like the profile of two people who aren't very close versus two people who are extremely close.  Yet that's what happened.  I would just get too wrapped up in ministry and life and she would never dare drive six hours to LA and she was too thrifty to take Southwest.
  
  Her being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, however, brought all of this to my attention.  What other mother would never ONCE in thirty years make any effort to make me feel guilty or bad for never coming back home?  In fact, it's been her unbridled love and enthusiasm for me, my calling as a pastor, my ministry here at EBCLA that has been the most amazing source of personal strength and focus all these years.  As much as she misses me, as much as I've been missing from her life and she's been missing from mine, I can't remember a single time that she's ever overtly or even covertly let me know that I've been gone too long.  What she has made a point of repeating is that she's glad I've been down in LA because she doesn't believe that I would have grown as much if I'd either have stayed in NoCal or had come back to serve in a church. 
  
  Thirty years.  You know what I just figured out?  Mom was the age I am now (53) when I headed south for seminary.  Whoa!  That just hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.  Back then, I thought she was sort of old already, but now I KNOW she wasn't old!  But she became an old woman while I've been away.
  
  So that's why, after hearing of the initial diagnosis, I found substitutes or replacements for all of my weekend responsibilities and was headed up to Sactown the next night.  As soon as I walked in her front door, she put her cancer-thinned arms around me and started sobbing.  "I'm so glad you came home, Ken.  I'm so glad you came home."
  
  Other then the fact that she'd lost 20 pounds the last couple of months, Mom looked and definitely acted like her typical self.  But the reports from her doctors made it impossible to ignore that cancer had established an immovable foothold on the head of her pancreas--the worst possible place for it to be. 
  
  It's one thing to go back home to the house where you grew up and to re-enter the flow of your original family.  It's another thing altogether to go back when there's a death sentence hanging over a family member's head.  Mind you, I'd made that kind of trip three times before, but this time I was awash with indecipherable thoughts and feelings because it was Mom.
  
  The next morning, as we were walking back to the house, I remarked that the sun was so much stronger ever since the city cut down the giant elm tree in front.  I said to her, "Looks like some of your neighbors have replanted new trees after their elms were cut down."  Mom casually responded, "I wouldn't live long enough to see it provide shade for our house. (pause) I'll let the next owner make that decision."  A simple statement, but one that was interlaced with her profound new sense of mortality.  Something told me that her impending sense of the end of her life had begun some time before the dreaded pronouncement.
  
  Later that afternoon, we were sitting in the dining room, the one with the threadbare carpet that she refused to replace ("What's the point?") and the wooden chair whose undercarriage had come unglued. 
  
  "Mom, if you think about it, we're all terminal.  It's just that you can no longer deny it.  I read once that it's only after you learn how to die that you can really know how to live.  What do you think about that?"
  
  "I believe that.  Now more than ever.  I'm grateful to God that He's let me live this long.  How can I be bitter when Emery only lived to 32 and I've lived more than 30 years longer than Melinda did?"
  
  "Sort of makes you wake up and realize that every day is a gift from God that deserves to be opened, doesn't it?  If God gives us one more day than others get, how can we waste it being bitter, angry or ungrateful?"
  
  "Ken, as much as I don't want this cancer inside me, I'm so grateful for the time God's given me, time to reconnect with my siblings, time to stop holding grudges and appreciate people more."
  
  "Mom, only God knows how many days you have, right?  Let's not waste a single one."
  
  
  Then, for the umpteenth time, we hugged and cried and laughed.  And, although we didn't say it, we sort of thanked God for cancer.
  
  Peace,
  pken.
  
  
  

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