Dear A.,
It’s January. You’re in our mess of an office, organizing-slash-working. I come in to ask a question. You hold up a piece of paper, edge torn from a spiral notebook.
Who’s this?, you ask.
K—, it says, with a local organization’s email and a local phone number, written on a torn-out sheet of a flip-up spiral notebook.
Oh, I say, this is that lovely therapist who sat next to you once when you were getting chemo. She was maybe 50 and in some kind of long-term treatment. Said she got chemo every three weeks. She told you about a mental health service nearby. Her mom was with her—had moved to live, I think, on the same street.
Oh, you say. Let’s see where she is. And you search for her name.
All that comes up is obituaries and tributes.
And I begin to cry.
It shouldn’t matter that she died of cancer, this woman. She was lovely, a beacon of warmth and friendship and support in the depressing chemo ward where most people are curtained off and some let out sounds of agony during their treatment. It shouldn’t matter, because what’s really sad is that she’s gone at all, this woman who helped others in her day job and in her time off, even as she faced her own inexorable demon.
But somehow it’s harder that she died of this. The treatment—all those years, that effort, the family support, the pain and anguish—didn’t work. She’s gone. Which means you could be, too.
Which I know in my head. I know first of all that any one of us could be gone, any day. I’ve held onto that heightened awareness, that anxiety about our fragility and that of everyone we care about, ever since you were first diagnosed. And you have a higher probability. I get that, on paper.
But do I really get it?
This is what tonight tells me: I don’t.
I don’t. I don’t get it. Because I can’t live thinking about that. I can’t worry about things that serious as if they’re immediate, all the time.
I don’t get it. And I don’t want to get it.
We’ve been through a version of cancer. We know, maybe, a bit more than some other people about mortality. But as far as we know, we got out of it (knock knock knock). Even if it’s temporary. Even if every scan, every blood test, every follow-up appointment is nerve-wracking. 97% of the time, we can think about other things. Or maybe 83%. Or 51%? I know it’s different for you.
I’ve come so far out of it that earlier this evening I started reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s biography of cancer. It’s excellent, by the way, which I feel comfortable saying even only half an hour in (my e-reader says I have 12.5 hours to go). And it wasn’t why I came by, but when I walked by I mentioned to you that you might be interested because it is such a fascinating history, and you said you have no desire to engage with anything related to cancer.
And then you asked me who this woman was, who gave you her name and email and phone number when she was living, incurable, in this world, but still making a beautiful warm life out of it, and then you and I did talk a bit about cancer after all.
I think my interest in this book might actually be, in part, because it feels academic. It’s interesting. Fascinating, but removed: it’s not about you.
This woman? She had cancer, and we met her, and she’s gone. Because of the cancer. The book is about her.
Which of course means that it’s about you, too.
Your cancer doesn’t feel real to me anymore.
Tonight, I think about it anyway.
What happens when you lose someone you love? When someone close to you dies? I can’t think of examples less abstract than that or I won’t be able to sleep.
If you’re young enough and in good enough health, what then? Do you relive it forever? Does the pain dull after a while? Does it become manageable? What does manageable even mean? You have no choice: they’re gone, you’re not. Maybe it’s the much more severe analogue of how I felt as you went through chemo: This is what we do in this moment.
This is what I wish for us: That we remain innocent. That we keep our eyes open, that we see and hear and remember the fragility of life, but mostly in the way of the people we used to be, untouched by death and disease. And that it stays that way for a long time.
Love,
O
I wrote this months ago and found it again tonight. I was looking to post something not about COVID-19, but it’s about mortality, so I’m pretty sure I failed.
With love to those who are sick or fragile (in terms of health or finances), or who are worried about someone who’s sick or fragile, or who’ve lost a loved one… and to all those beautiful, useful people doing all they can to keep the world turning and to take care of the rest of us.
Send me emails like this, Ophira!
This Glass Has Water 