Tag Archives: cancer

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie

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September 20, 2019

Cokie Roberts died this week. I heard her speak once, three years ago, on a panel. She struck me then as a calm, poised, intelligent woman. A journalist, Cokie had been on the Washington scene for many years, beginning back in the day when there were statesmen in the Senate. Former Presidents Bush and Obama recognized her passing with words of praise, as did many in high places.

But here is what hit me: she was almost exactly a year younger than I am. She would have been 76 on her next birthday at the end of December. I will be 77 on January 3rd. And no one remarked on how young she was, how it was a shame that her life was cut short. Because it wasn’t, she had lived a respectable amount of time. As have I.

Also this week I received the news that two friends had been diagnosed with cancer. One was diagnosed with leukemia on Monday, and then the devastating news hit that he had died today. He was strong and vital, a man who skied and climbed mountains, just one year older than I. 

Another friend on Monday told me she was fighting giant cell arteritis. It can cause blindness if not caught in time. It is a case of one’s cells going berserk, as with cancer, but it is an auto immune disease, associated with another auto immune condition poly myalgia rheumatica, which both my friend and I have.

Tomorrow is the first day of autumn, and the leaves are beginning to turn. In the afternoon I will be going to the memorial service of a friend who died of cancer in June. She was 62.

Time is passing.

Time is passing.

Here is one of my father’s favorite poems, by Gerald Manley Hopkins:

Spring and Fall
to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Love and Loss and Grief

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April 9, 2017

My minister asked me to speak about the healing power of love at our worship services this past Sunday, and this is what I said:

Not quite seven years ago, my husband Bill died of cancer. He was one month and one day short of his 68th birthday. We celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary six weeks before his death. Bill died at home in our bedroom, peacefully with his family around him. We were able to give him the kind of death he wanted.

When such a deep loss happens to you, you feel as though someone has handed you this enormous boulder to carry, a rough and heavy boulder of grief. You stagger at first as you try to carry it, and you try not to fall down with it in public, but in private you simply collapse and sit beside that boulder and weep.

But after a time you learn how to carry the boulder without collapsing so frequently. And after an even longer time the boulder seems not as large and not as heavy, or perhaps you have grown stronger and learned how to carry it more easily. And the surface is no longer as rough, perhaps smoothed by time or by your tears, and the boulder has become easier to grip.

And once your boulder of grief does not overwhelm you, you lift your head up and you look around.

You look at all the people with such tenderness and new awareness.

And you see clearly the boulders so many are carrying. You knew on an intellectual level before, that they were burdened by grief and sorrow, but now you see their grief with your heart.

The friends who lost their son in a terrible accident.

Your colleague who struggles with depression, and the other colleague whose mother has been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s.

Your friend whose husband collapsed while running and died of a heart attack.

The couple who are coming to terms with the fact that they will never conceive a child.

And for those whose stories you do not know, but you can imagine. No one is spared from grief.

Your own heart has been softened by grief, and your sense of compassion has expanded. You will never be the same.

And perhaps after a very long time, your boulder will shrink in size until it is a rock small enough to fit into your pocket, a warm smooth rock that is a talisman of the love that will never leave you and that has opened your heart to all those around you.

May it be so.