Death seems to prevail more than life at the moment and not only am I the bearer of bad news, I shoulder it as well, carrying the burden of my patients while my aching shoulders plead for relief.
Her previously treated breast cancer had recurred, another’s had metastasized. A woman presented to me bleeding and I pulled the dead fetus from her cervix where it lay lodged. She had been carrying it for the past month, knowing the heart no longer beat. Another presented cramping and bleeding, again I pulled the deceased remnants.
The pace of work and life hardly leaves me a moment to grasp the notion that life has passed. Kept at arms length by the sterile shiny instruments, I hold the experience at arms length as if keeping it a safe distance from my body will keep me from feeling. The grief still comes, curling up like a shortly breaking wave – crashing on my beach and lunging for my heart.
I arch my back and resist the pull of entering this sacred space of learning what no one can teach; learning only from what life presents: Experience. The thing I want without actually going through the process. The thing I hoped to observe from a safe distance and monitor, hoping to choose my experiences rather than them choosing me. I have been unsuccessful. I resist befriending this life for fear it will tear me apart. I think, however, I must be torn apart or I will not be whole, I will not fulfill my humanity.
Dr. Rachel Remen writes; “Befriending life is less a matter of knowledge than a question of wisdom. It is not about mastering life, controlling it or exerting our will over it, nor how well intentioned our will may be. Befriending life is more about harmlessness than it is about control. Harmlessness requires connection. It means listening to life from the place in use that is connected to the wholeness around us. The place in us that is whole.” She goes on to note “I rarely recognized life’s wisdom at the time it is given….and not every gift of wisdom comes nicely gift-wrapped. I have often received such a gift only many years after it was offered….Much wisdom is a hand-me-down. Like all hand-me-downs, it may be too big at the time it is given.”
Five more days remain of my stretch of 14. I’ll tell more women they have cancer this week. I’ll do several ultrasounds to find gestational sacs and fetal poles; some will have them and some will not. And in the middle of it, I will wear my too big hand-me-down wisdom, hoping to grow into it; longing to befriend life even when it means meeting death.
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