Message from a Living Man

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted." I don't know who said it, but the Carnegie-Mellon professor, Dr. Randy Pausch, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, quotes it as one of his favorites in the video below. His experiences of not getting what he wanted seem to be very positive.



My father died of pancreatic cancer 18 years ago. My memory of what he went through isn't remotely like Pausch's report. My dad lasted five months after diagnosis, which is a long time for this kind of cancer; in those days, the prognosis was two months. He wanted very much to live, and he tried to make the best of it, even driving his car until two weeks before he died; but he didn't have physical strength, and the side effects of the chemo treatments that shrank his tumor and bought him some time were very debilitating. My mother and I watched him go from a robust working man, with a zest for life and a raunchy sense of humor, to someone frail, spirit broken and looking much older than his 69 years, who spent his final months in pain.

Looking at Pausch, it appears they've made incredible strides in the treatment of pancreatic cancer since then. Pancreatic cancer is still a death sentence, yet one can't help but see that this man's fabulous attitude and courage are healing. Watching him certainly is healing to me.

Many years ago, I visited a friend on her deathbed at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, a hospice. She'd had breast cancer, received invasive treatment for it, yet eventually the disease spread to her bones and throughout her body. When she first got the diagnosis, she did everything she could to keep working, and to take care of her health, even taking on a controversial regimen of organic food, gallons of carrot juice, coffee enemas, and handfuls of supplements. It was time consuming, prohibitively expensive (really beyond her means), sometimes painful and exhausting, but she handled it all with good humor...and this was a woman who was not known for her good humor in the best of times. She also made time to do some things she'd always wanted to do, which included traveling to Europe, and attending the kalachakra initiation with the Dalai Lama in New York.

Everyone at Calvary seemed happy and pain-free (they keep the patients on pain-killers); not a bad way to go. I walked around the place and everyone who was conscious had a wide-eyed expression of peace like Ramana Maharshi. The hospital made sure these folks lived full lives until their last; they offered art classes, "museum walks" (consisting of wheeling the beds around the building to look at a fine collection of donated artwork), hair stylists, concerts, any movie they wanted right in their rooms. Friends and families are allowed and even encouraged to come spend the night with patients in their rooms, read to them, sing with them, and bring them their favorite foods if they still have an appetite.

My friend described her "slumber party" the night before; she and her best friend had shared their preferred brand of vanilla bean ice cream (I brought her some more), seen a first-run movie, and enjoyed lots of laughs. "We had a wonderful time," my friend gushed; a wonderful time on her deathbed. She passed away a week later.

It's easier to "love what is" when all is going well in our world. What about those of us with problems, like a terminal illness, that are not going to go away? It may not be easy, but it is indeed possible to live well in the meantime, as this happy professor illustrates. Unless he's a ridiculously good actor, Pausch seems to be one of those people for whom all is going well—even or perhaps especially with a virulent and painful form of cancer—as he lives his life one day at a time, with gratitude for all that has been good and for all that continues to be good.

This may be one of those videos that everyone but me has seen already. In case you haven't yet, I hope you'll enjoy it and find healing in it. If he can do it, we can too.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

On No Sorrow

I've been avoiding this post for days, not wishing to fetishize the death of my friend, nor to question it away...nor to draw attention to myself as a great tribute-writer or some sort of paragon of "how to accept death with equanimity." Today the words will have their way.

Here's my sweet Betty, who passed away, her partner wrote, "with grace and beauty," out of pain and happy, on Friday night, March 30. This was the second bout of cancer in her body that I am aware of; after successful treatments for lesions in the brain last month, more lesions were found in her spine and she opted not to continue treatments. Hospice was called in and in her last days, Betty was surrounded by loved ones and, I like to think, other angels such as she.

Betty and I were not close in the way I used to think closeness meant: we had no weekly or even monthly phone calls or emails, we never visited each other at our homes or took trips together. We lived on opposite sides of the country for most of our acquaintance and hers was not the name that first came to mind in my times of need; yet I would gladly have flown to her bedside if called upon (and I understand she wanted no visitors). Instead I sent Reiki, love notes and photos.

She told a friend she would love a call from me; I didn't call in time. I'm not sad about it; I realized any desire to speak to her was not for her but for me. Our last words were exchanged many months before her diagnosis and I am sure they were loving words, as ours always were to each other. Now I can talk to her whenever I want to...and I do.

Betty and I bonded not simply over The Work but over our mutual passion for writing. She was a talented essayist and wanted to write about The Work for publication, as I had done. She sent me her gems for editing and critique; she struck me as so generous and ego-less with the things she loved.

At a School for The Work, some of the staff staged a skit based on The Sound of Music, called "The Sound of Questions." (Guess who played the Mother Superior?!) As "Sister Willingnessa," Betty gave an adorable performance as an innocent nun who sees the light of her own truth while inquiring into the Ten Commandments with "Sister Katie."

"But I don't covet anyone's wife!"
"Go in, sister..."
"Oh...oh now I see...my mother was a wife and (crying) I wanted my mother to love meeeeeee!"

It was just a few seconds' worth of dialog but she was so sweet and engaging, I will never forget it.

A friend who was at her bedside wrote, "Betty is teaching me to live through her dying." What I can say is that Betty taught me how to live through her living. Knowing her, she didn't miss out on one precious second of her last days of life. As someone who is "alive," I cannot say the same for myself yet. When I got the news of Betty's diagnosis, I had her in the grave immediately; for a little while, believing my thoughts about illness and death, I was under the ground while she, so clearly, was living a full life. While she was still in treatment, she wrote me that a core of peace always remained untouched by drugs and hospital visits and the mental fogginess that occurs with brain cancer. And, she said, it took hard work to stay focused on recovery. I love that she knew when to stop, that she never gave herself anything less than the best that was available.

The day prior to Betty's passing, I felt weak and experienced lower body aches from an impending flu. I kept thinking how she'd be so graceful and present with that pain and it has helped me to be with the discomfort without war. (WWBD: "What Would Betty Do?") That night, as a friend and I were talking about her on the telephone, we simultaneously experienced Betty in us, as us. Here as my very self she remains, so abundantly present that I cannot grieve her death or miss her.

Rest well, sweet Sister Willingnessa. I love you so much.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.