A PORTRAIT OF GRIEF
I say hello to an old friend at the appetizer table during a Christmas party the other night.
"How are you doing?" he asks, in that uniquely weighty way I've become accustomed to.
"Better all the time!” I reply. It's my usual refrain. I have ready-made responses like that (I’m sure all of us cancer survivors do) like how they say Einstein wore the same outfit every day so he could reserve his brain energy for math. Canned cancer answers are like that, only you package, store, and disperse them to save the crumbs of emotional energy you do have for more important interactions. That and you don't want to burst into tears or get uncomfortably philosophical with a well- meaning acquaintance as you scoop cheese balls onto a tiny plate.
"The bar was pretty low there for a while,” I joke. I add a joke this time because Christmas lights make me jovial and I've made a good dent in my glass of Pinot noir.
We both chuckle. "Yeah it sure was!" he says. But then he asks a real question. I do appreciate those:
"Is it true what they say about having cancer and facing your mortality... about how it changes you?"
"Yes," I say, nodding heartily as I toothpick olives onto my little plate. I don't even like olives. This conversation has just put my body on autopilot.
"It's clarifying," I say. Another tried and true canned response.
"And I'm thankful. Overall, I'm thankful."
He nods and smiles.
I mean what I say, but I also breathe a sigh of relief as we walk back over to the party and start talking to the others. I am relieved in this moment because the short answer was enough for him. It seems to be enough for most people.
This is just how it goes. It’s how its gone for me in numerous interactions over the past couple months. But I'm ready to give the long answer now. When you’re no longer living in the trauma you finally have the capacity to process it. Cancer is the pebble that drops into the lake and the ripples are different for everyone.
Even now, everyone talks about my cancer in the past tense (myself included) yet every day there's evidence of it in my present. The bilateral mastectomy happened August 1st, and then my hormone therapy began in mid September. That’s when grief made its entrance. First it leaked in under the walls and floorboards and within a couple weeks it was crashing over me like a tidal wave.
But I did not hide from grief. It called out to me like the ocean and I chose to walk the shoreline. Some days the waves barely touched my feet and other days they nearly drowned me. I let it envelop every inch of my being, pour into my throat and ears and then back out my eyes. Better free flowing grief, I thought, than the ignored and hidden kind that puckers the wall paint and draws black rings on the ceiling.
The grief began to wash me clean. It still is. It taught me what I wanted, what I expected, what I truly believed. On the days I let it grow, crest, and and take me under, I learned to surrender. Because to grieve a thing is to remember how deeply you loved, hoped for, or desired it.
Much like cancer showed me a life with pleasure must also carry pain, grief showed me a life with love must also bear the heartache of loss. The waves of grief — terrible, powerful, honest — continue to cleanse me. For a long time I thought the cancer was what brought the clarity. But now I see it's been the grieving, the feeling and accepting and moving through. Sometimes swimming, other times floating, often times treading water.
Cancer took so much from me. But every time I weep I realize it didn't take my ability to love. And if my heart is broken today, it means it wasn't broken before, and someday it will be whole again.
Sincerely,
Mitzi
SELF PORTRAITS 10.30.22
When I could only express grief through imagery.
