A couple weeks ago I was talking to a good friend of mine and we exchanged our usual hellos and then she told me something, which stopped me dead in my tracks. Telling me that a 7-year-old niece of hers has cancer in her brain stem… the doctors explained that she has 6 months left to live.
How do you deal with that? I just thought of Sumaa who is now 8 and I still look at her like my little baby. I would have thought that I wouldn’t have much of a problem dealing with death since I’ve dealt with it so often over the past couple years. I thought about how I got over those deaths, but that doesn’t even apply here… this child is more alive than anyone.
Are you supposed to treat her any differently? How?
I have seen several people code (and die) in the ER, it puts some wear and tear on me even though I don’t know them but generally speaking I’ve found a way to cope. It was completely different when my father or grandfather passed because I knew them. I never even met this girl (or I don’t remember meeting her) and I started to crack.
There is no one answer as to how to deal with this situation but as weird as it sounds, I’ve been watching my own behavior. I’ve noticed that I mentally put my self in many sad or depressing situations and then find then beauty in it. I did just that in this situation. The thing is I don’t do it consciously, I’ve just work this way with out even thinking. The beauty of this incredibly sad situation is that this girl at this very moment is the definition of life. One of the most important keys to life is to live it, not to have lived it or hope to live it, but to live it at this very moment. I keep thinking about this verse from one of my favorite poems…
In a child's first year it’s in search of its 5th year,
In its child's 10th' year its in search of its 16th year,
In its 5th its year its in search of its 25th year,
And when its dead, its in search of its life.
So why should it not be in search of now?
You don't even have to search for now,
Now is here.
Has now used and abused you?
Maybe Now loves you and doesn't want to lose you.
What if something accused you of not being good enough when it just met you?
You hardly know now,
The same way you desire then, now;
You will desire now, then.
So it seems you are searching for what is present.
-Amir Sulaiman
Just last night I was at Wall-Mart where I saw a guy who had the same disease process as my father. I actually had met him at Pizza Roma’s and my brothers and I talked to him there. I was so shook when I saw him because he was a spitting image of my father. It had been about 4 months since I had seen him and this time it shook me just as bad. For the entire 5 minutes that I was talking to him my eyes were ready to burst. It’s so weird because his mannerisms and the way he talked were so similar to my father (or maybe I was just deliriously imagining things). In any case, I was thinking to my self about this mans life. He is 49 (or 43 I’m not sure) years old and with that disease process the person is basically sitting on a ticking time-bomb, waiting for their aorta to have a full-blown aneurysm. I’m sure he was aware for it but he was so soft spoken and relaxed in his speech. It made me think more and more about his life and obviously my fathers with it. What if I were in that situation? Would I be able to handle that process in the same elegant manner that he has? The more I thought about it the more I came to the conclusion that even if he was not as relaxed an individual before he must have become so very quickly after realizing the gravity of the situation.
Knowing that you’re liable to die at any moment (as we all are, however in this case it has a very high morbidity rate especially at his age) is one of the most humbling experiences. It felt very weird saying that but it’s true. He is able to grow so much on a spiritual level on a constant basis because of the fact that he has to deal with this burden on daily basis.
The main point is, even though it hurts like hell to have to deal with such burdens in our life, they are truly blessings. Its because of those burdens, obstacles and hardships that allow us to live and grow as people.
