After A. was diagnosed with cancer, I began thinking of our experience as a way to better understand the human condition.
Pre-cancer
Before cancer, we never contemplated our mortality more than the average Joe or Jane.
For instance, soon after we returned from a trip Guatemala, an entire bus full of people fell off the side of a cliff; this led to several… minutes… of alternating shock and sorrow and relief over the next several days. (Is this callous? But how long do we usually spend contemplating events that are in the past and do not directly affect us, however horrifying they may be? How long did most people who found out about A.‘s cancer think about it?).
Our brushes with mortality were never significant enough to take away from our lives, to keep us from functioning. And so, even with our experiences, even with travel and actively seeking out other people’s stories, I was never really able to get, to really internalize, this key element of humanity:
Our existence is *quite* precarious
When A. was diagnosed, he said that we all have this hazard function, this probability of dropping dead on any given day; the difference was that now he was aware of it.
Or, as Nina Riggs tells it in The Bright Hour,
I am reminded of an image that one of my cousins—a woman who lost her husband to a swift and brutal cancer last year—suggested to me recently over email: that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more—sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.
And now we’re aware. We can see all the way down. We may forget, we may intentionally put blinders on most of the time so we can function, but we’ve seen the abyss and have gotten to know the ridges near the top quite well. I think—I hope—this awareness is permanent, because it sure cost a lot to get it.
For me, focusing on our common humanity is what helps me put one foot in front of the other. Common humanity is about both what I can offer and what I better understand. Realizing, and remembering, that we can use our experience to show other people what this can be like, that we can demystify it a little, that we can generally be open and available so that one day when it happens to someone else our experience can support them a little bit—this, to me, is half of the purpose of this experience.
The other half is this: that through this experience of being a partner and caretaker for someone going through cancer treatment, I’ve learned a lot about mortality. About disease. And about struggles in life in general.
Empathy: An upside to contemplating mortality
I believe there’s a small set of things we want in life. The details vary from culture to culture and from person to person, but on a high level, the set of potential desires is pretty small: We want some level of security—physical, nutritional, financial, emotional, psychological. We want to be healthy, to be able to use and rely on our bodies and our minds. We want some kinds of freedom of choice. We want to have some variety of love and/or companionship. We want some of these things: meaning, purpose, to feel like we’re growing and making progress. There’s more, of course. I haven’t thought this through enough to claim this is all. The specifics matter, but I believe that for empathy, the circumstances matter more.
And these circumstances: they are complex. They are nuanced. And they, much more than the desires, are often invisible. It’s easy to assume you know all about other people’s lives, but what allows us to empathize with others is realizing that we don’t know, making a point to recognize the potential for all sorts of nuance we can’t actually see.
Getting that, understanding that we all have these super-unique circumstances—that is one of the major, expensive lessons that I learned from cancer.
Could I have learned it another way? Definitely. Sure, this way was effective. The downside is that it comes with lifetime toxicity for my partner and a host of mysterious, to-be-discovered short-, medium-, and long-term side effects. Plus, you know, all the depression and anxiety and life-interruption and still not solving all our problems from beforehand. So I don’t recommend learning this way. Learn by talking to people. Read books. Try method acting. Work or volunteer somewhere. Don’t get cancer, okay? Okay. I’m glad we’re on the same page.
The understanding, the relating to others, is one of the reasons I like to tell people what I can when they ask—because there’s no other way of learning how other people live life and what they face, and of therefore realizing down the road that even if the specifics differ, you’re not alone in struggling. In facing mortality. In wondering how you’ll make it through the day.
The paradox is that the differing specifics bring us together. You can only share your perspective, but it is exactly that story that allows you to reach and teach other people.
What we all have in common is nuance.
Story time
A. went to a sushi restaurant in the spring. It’d been ages since he’d had sushi because the chemo compromised his immune system and raw fish isn’t recommended when you have no way of fighting infections.
He sat at the bar next to an older couple.
They married in the mid-1960s, so they’ve got to be at least in their mid-70s. They looked healthy, fit, young, happy, even joyful, out at one of their favorite restaurants, being treated to free dishes because it was the restaurant’s anniversary and they’re regulars.
They talked. A. mentioned he works at the university. The woman said that’s great, we need as many doctors as we can get.
Oh, but I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a professor… But speaking of doctors, the reason I didn’t eat sushi for a while is because I was going through chemo for a rare type of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
And guess what? She said she’s had Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for nearly 20 years.
When the couple left, she grabbed A. by the shoulders and told him to look into the mirror every morning and say to himself, “I am at ease. I do not have this disease.”
Here’s what I like about this story:
First: A., who is normally an incredibly compassionate person, was seeing and sitting next to and talking to this couple. In the midst of struggling to go back to all of his life roles and responsibilities after just completing cancer treatment, he told himself they were happy and healthy and probably never had to face problems like his.
The reality appears to have been the opposite: this particular couple probably knew how to appreciate a good moment when they had it. Which is a reminder that you can never assume you know what other people have experienced in life, and also that it is possible to emerge from the depths of disease and struggle, even if they quite literally accompany you forever, and find ways to enjoy life.
Second: I grew up keeping a lot of things to myself or within my family. I thought it wasn’t appropriate to talk to other people about negative experiences, so I didn’t.
What I have found repeatedly through this experience is that you are often rewarded when you share. You tell someone else about your humanity, your past or present struggle, and amazingly, surprisingly, upliftingly, sadly, shockingly often, way more often than seems statistically probable, you will hear about someone else’s similar struggle. And then you are together for a moment.
Our shared humanity, remembering that we are in this together, that even the bad things bring us closer together, helps us make it through. It doesn’t make the bad things good. It doesn’t make them worth it. But you don’t have a choice about the bad things, certainly not once they’ve happened. So at least this: a reminder that there’s still water in the glass.
This Glass Has Water 
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