In response to last week’s post Cancer Again (Naturally), a reader wrote in a
comment, “Usually the prognosis is pretty grim once it [cancer] has
metastasized.” I saw my oncologist the next day and it turns out
that’s true.
I am going to
start radiation treatments the first week in May, but while we
might be able to get rid of the current tumor, sooner or later, it
will spread somewhere else and if goes someplace where there are
vital organs, well, let’s just say, it won’t be pretty.
A relative asked
me if I was at least a little angry that the cancer “came back”
(though it actually hadn’t left). He mentioned how novelist and
Christian theologian C.S. Lewis vented at God when his wife died a
painful death after her cancer, thought to be cured, returned.
Lewis wrote a journal of his thoughts and feelings about his wife’s
ordeal that he published as A Grief Observed in 1961. I
have not read the book (not much of a Lewis fan), but previewed it
at Google Books: “Meanwhile, where is God? . . . Go to Him when
your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do
you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and
double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” (p6)
In the past, I
have had some issues with anger management. When the liver cancer
first appeared, I was angry. I was irritated. It was a major
interruption in my life. I had other things I wanted to do than go
on doctor’s appointments, sit around in waiting rooms, have people
poke and prod me, etc. But I did my best to work through the anger,
and its cousin, fear. And I wrote about that process here on The
Endless Further.
After the
transplant, I thought the cancer was gone. But it was merely in
hiding, keeping a low profile, and now it’s active again,
threatening to take my life. But I am not angry this time. No
thought of anger has risen in my mind. No angry emotion has
surfaced. I don’t believe in God, so getting angry with him would
be like venting to a closed door. No sense in getting angry at the
cancer, it could care less whether I like it or not.
In A Guide
to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, Shantideva wrote that anger is
our greatest enemy, capable of destroying all the good in our
lives, and since it has no purpose, rather than getting angry at
something or someone, it’s better to see whatever it is as
assisting you in your spiritual development.
Viewing cancer
as a spiritual friend is a tall order. I’m not quite there, but no
anger is a good accomplishment.
Another reader
in a comment to last week’s post, encouraged me to continue to
share this part of my journey, and I think I will for the time
being. However, for today, that’s all I have.
With all this
going on, I have neglected National Poetry Month, which I like to
celebrate each year. Anger can be a positive, motivating force when
it is in response to the suffering of others or directed at
injustice. Set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War in
1936, Cesar Vallejo’s poem is a meditation on that aspect of
anger.
The Anger That
Breaks The Man Into Children
Translated from
Spanish by Clayton Eshleman and José Rubia Barcia
The anger that
breaks the man into children,
that breaks the child into equal birds,
and the bird, afterward, into little eggs;
the anger of the poor
has one oil against two vinegars.
The anger that
breaks the tree into leaves,
the leaf into unequal buds
and the bud, into telescopic grooves;
the anger of the poor
has two rivers against many seas.
The anger that
breaks the good into doubts,
the doubt, into three similar arcs
and the arc, later on, into unforeseeable tombs;
the anger of the poor
has one steel against two daggers.
The anger that
breaks the soul into bodies;
the body into dissimilar organs
and the organ, into octave thoughts;
the anger of the poor
has one central fire against two craters.