to get some skills out of this weekend to help myself and to feel better.” Seeing this rugged man cry brings the group into a deep silence and a true appreciation of his pain.
The next woman is on the verge of tears. Rick has provided her an opportunity she has been seeking. She’s over the physical effects of her breast cancer, but realizes she has denied her feelings through the whole process. She says, “I really want to get close to my feelings. I want to mourn the loss of my life before cancer.”
I look around the room and can see most of the people have a tissue in hand and have released some of their sorrow. With the intensity also comes a lightness, a feeling that there is more space in our hearts.
Ed has a brain tumor, which has come fifteen years after a testicular cancer diagnosis, and he struggles with the uncertainty of the situation. Debbie, Ed’s wife, complains that “once you finish with one doctor, they send you off to another one. And they just cut you loose. You’re just drifting. They never see you again.” She summarizes, “The medical system has been a bit unsupportive.”
More and more stories. People speaking from their hearts. Everyone listens with rapt attention. David is the father of Valerie, a beautiful young woman with a brain tumor. Valerie takes the microphone from her father and they glance at each other with love in their eyes. Her tumor appears dormant after surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, but everyone feels the sadness of a young woman taken away from her imagined future. “My dream was to teach and I was teaching in Japan when this happened. I don’t think I’ll ever teach again. And I’d like to be a mother, but that’s been put on hold too. I hope this weekend leads me to the path where I can start working again.” David wraps his arm around his daughter and she collapses into his shoulder. Our hearts are raw. People begin to wonder how long this can go on. We are only halfway through the circle.
Patty has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and the staging tests show spots on the liver and lungs. “The most difficult thing so far”—her voice turns squeaky, tears streaming down her cheeks—“has been to tell my family. Because it makes them so sad. I wonder what I should have done so this would not have happened. I hope this weekend we can learn to deal with some of those things. Thank you all for sharing with us.” I make a note to myself to emphasize in the lecture later that evening that getting cancer was not her fault. But for now we will simply hold her pain.
Wally is Patty’s husband. He is a retired executive in his sixties and owns several companies. He has always been a “take charge” type of person. As he watches his wife he wipes the tears from his face. He blows his nose, slumping down, staring at the floor. His body begins to heave, trying to release the deep sobs of sadness. He holds himself in, pushing the tears back as they well up. He takes a deep breath. A few more seconds pass. He takes another long breath. Patty jokes, poking her husband in the shoulder, “…and Wally is my greatest strength.”
I wait for the laughter to die down so everyone can hear the seriousness of my voice: “This is strength that you’re seeing right now.” After a pause I add “Let it come. You have a deep heart.”
Wally’s voice lilts up and down “It’s been very difficult not knowing what the future holds. We are both results-oriented people and we had a life planned. We’ve done a lot of things together and I don’t want it to end.” Wally turns, his head lowered towards Patty, and she holds onto him tightly.
People are tiring now. I can hear a shuffling in the chairs. They are asking themselves, “How can I go on? How can I take any more?” People do not yet realize that listening to the last twenty people in the circle will be a spiritual lesson as their hearts will keep opening with compassion.
Jan has lost her creativity. Kathy has had to accept the possibility of dying to facilitate her amazing recovery. Julian is dealing with the cancer by himself. Velma is surprised by her outburst of tears, having held onto the pain for so long—for her son’s lymphoma diagnosis five years ago and for her husband’s recent brain tumor. Theresa is cured of a lung cancer the doctors said was terminal ten years before. Her journey was “a wonderful experience”.
Remarkably, for all the pain, suffering, and tears in the room, so many people keep saying how struck they are by the strength and courage they hear in each others’ stories. The circle is generating a powerful feeling of love.
Anne passed the first time around, so she is the last person to speak. Her ovarian cancer came at a stressful time in her life. “I was single, lost my job in a mass layoff, and was about to start my own business when I was diagnosed.” Her voice is weak with exasperation. “That was the last straw because I wasn’t able to do anything, much less look after myself! I was told, ‘We need six more months of your life to give you chemotherapy.’ I wasn’t sure how I would support myself… much less find the strength I needed.
“For my whole life I was someone who looked after other people. I was strong for people. But now I need to care for myself. I need to rebuild my confidence and my life.
“I focus on the word ‘retreat’ for this weekend because it takes me away from all the responsibilities I have. I am so grateful to have this time here with you.”
After everyone has spoken, I reassure them that the whole weekend will not be as intense as this opening exercise. I encourage them to stay with whatever emotions have come up, listening to so many stories at once.
“Sharing and listening to stories can touch you in many ways. Stories can be inspiring and they can also bring up many different emotions; there is great value in welcoming them all. When you allow yourself to feel sadness, grief and pain, you stretch your heart, opening more space to appreciate the preciousness of life and the joy of living.”
Chapter 5
Andrew: Opening the Door to a New Life
Andrew was lying on the stretcher outside the operating room, overcome with a profound and inexplicable sense of peace and an inner feeling that everything was going to be fine. It made no sense. At 58, his life as a successful business consultant, newspaper columnist, husband and father had been completely shattered. The operating room nurse interrupted his reflections to confirm his identity. “What’s your date of birth?” she asked.
“March 5, 1948,” Andrew responded but he added in his own mind that he was also born a second time, just two weeks ago, on Christmas Eve, when he suddenly fell ill. His cancer diagnosis arrived as “a present wrapped in barbed wire”. Velma, his loving wife of thirty years, woke up to a violent shaking in the bed. (He joked later, “Not the type of shaking you want to have on your bed.”)
Andrew was trapped in a grand mal seizure; he was shaking uncontrollably, gritting his teeth, eyes staring deep into nowhere. Velma called the paramedics. The seizure continued in the ambulance, into the emergency room, shaking the life out of his body. Forty-five minutes later he was sedated. His CAT scan showed a tumor the size of a tangerine in the front of his brain, but the doctors couldn’t be sure if it was malignant. Surgery would follow in two weeks.
As his nurse wheeled him into the operating suite, Andrew was still aching from the seizure that ripped his muscles, yet he felt an incredible sense of peace that defied any sense of reasonableness given what was to come. Dr. Bernstein, a renowned neurosurgeon, was about to drill out a large piece of bone, cut through the normal brain tissue, and carefully dissect out as much of this tumor as possible—all while Andrew was awake.
This ‘awake-craniotomy’, done as a three-hour day-surgery procedure, is used to minimize effects on the normal brain. But even with the cutting-edge technology, Andrew and Velma had been told that he may come out of surgery
