Wow. Well I came home today from Proton feeling in such good spirits, especially after my stop at the Eclipse, chatting with Krista, and then walking outside to see this beautiful scene in the sky. To me, the cloulds looked like a spine and ribcage. There was also a kind of diamond shaped rainbow. My phone camera sort-of captured it. It was very beautiful. Then I felt so excited about things, it being such a gorgeous day and all, I made a you-tube video, la la la. Then, I guess about 45 minutes ago, I took a look at the bloglist I keep an eye on, and read the latest news about Adrienne. Alison, Adrienne's mom, wrote that they are taking Adrienne of the vent tomorrow morning- that they have done all they can do. I have not ever met Alison or Adrienne but I have corresponded with both of them through the Webmagic Forum. People from the forum begin to feel like family because you start keeping up so closely with what is going on with one another, through the ups and downs of life with cancer. My heart is aching with this news. I don't know what to say. I think I'll share an excerpt from "Everything Changes," a book in which Kairol Rosenthal, a cancer "survivor," documents her conversations with other cancer "survivors." Something said by a man she calls Seth stood out to me when I read it the other night. It has been in my mind, to some extent, ever since I read it.
"At the end of treatment, I got super-sick with really high fevers from a rare infection and was in the hospital. They didn't know what was wrong with me. And I felt like I had already died. ...I thought, It is over. This has got to be it. I cannot stay here anymore. I'm ready to die. I had a constant flow of tears. That is where I connected into what God and spirituality are. It is the brokenheartedness of feeling complete desperation. My heart was craked open, and there was this incredible tenderness inside. Everybody has this tenderness, we just don't know how to get there. This fragile state is the closest to being at one with God or the universe. That vulnerable and raw reference point is the greatest teacher. That is where the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and the really compassionate people of the world are coming from. They have a constant access to this deep understanding of what it is to be human and what it is to experience pain.
"To me, this is the most real place, but it's raw and uncomfortable, so why would you want to go there? We do everything we can in our power to run from that painful, ugly place. It is not necessarily what we would think of as positive. But it is real. We rush around our lives wanting happiness, but it evades us because we are not willing to touch what is real. We think, Oh, it is money or success or things being a certain way that will bring us happiness or satisfaction. But I think it actually comes from that brokenheartedness, which is our true humanity. It is the place were we are our weakest and our strongest. From that place, you can relate to anyone" (p.126).
I definitely have a sense of what Seth is talking about- and I believe he is right. It is hard to live out of a broken heart state of being all the time- the ego works so hard to cover it up. But it is there...beneath the busy thoughts and other forms of defense. In moments where I have felt especially vulnerable, during this cancer experience, have also been the moments I felt closest to God, and indubitbly interconnected with the Divine.
I don't know how to connect this with Adrienne, or if I even should, as I am ultimately an outsider to the situation. But the rainbow I saw just recently, when I saw it, I got the feeling of passageways, transititions. And that, although there is no way I can really know until I make that jump myself, I have this feeling that the next world is going to be very, very beautiful.
