sprint

9:30 pm on a Friday night and I've covered 38 lectures in the past 5 days.  Good grief I hope I retained some of that information covered in nearly 400 pages for the last round of block tests that start on Monday.  Then right after that are the finals which of course are cumulative and account for anywhere from 20-30% of the overall grade.

thou mayest

When it comes to things creative - food, music, art - I tend to be exceptionally picky.  So whenever I find a musical artist that appeals to me, it's no small feat.  And then to find one that appeals to my wife, too, well that's just plain rare to find one we agree upon.  That happened recently in the group Mumford & Sons.  I downloaded the album from iTunes and sure enough, my wife and I both liked what songs we heard so far.  Then one day driving home, I ventured into parts of the album I had not heard yet.  And one song in particular contained in it lyrics so painful and yet so beautiful that my eyes welled up and I felt as if my heart would burst.  I had to pull the car over to keep from wrecking it.

Cold is the water
It freezes your already cold mind
Already cold, cold mind

And death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance

But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand

And you are the mother
The mother of your baby child
The one to whom you gave life

And you have your choices
And these are what make man great
His ladder to the stars

But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand

And I will tell the night
Whisper, "Lose your sight"
But I can't move the mountains for you.

It's basically taken from Steinbeck's East of Eden.  Timshel is a Hebrew word that is difficult to translate into English.  Here's Steinbeck's version of what it means.  Somehow, I fell like Cain in this story.

my brother

We all present different personas to different people.  I am at different times a dad, a son, a husband, an etc.  You get the picture.  Consequently, we don't always get to see certain sides of people.  One side of my brother that always seems to come out, though, is his concern for other people.  Just the other day, I was sitting on the couch next to his bed.  It's an emotional weekend with the house full of family for Easter and I can tell he's in pain.  Surprisingly, it's just he and I alone together and there's a pause in the conversation when he asks, "how are you dealing with all this?"

Despite his own pain and struggles, he automatically asks how I'm coping.  That's just the kind of guy that he is.

terrain of the soul - part I

I spent three days and two nights down with my brother in his hotel while he finished up his radiation therapy last week.  I'd like to say that we had some good talks but I will not use the word 'good'.  Nobody in their right mind would use an adjective such as that to describe the topics of our verbal wrestling.  Meaningful.  Heartfelt.  Soulful.  And unfortunately, Necessary.  I think those come closer to the truth, at least from the lenses of my eyes.  We spoke at length of the concept of burden which I wrote about earlier.  In my desire to assure him that he was not a burden to me, I probably missed what he felt.  So I apologize to him and I thought long and hard about what he said.  As I feel and taste it, burden may not be a big enough word to encompass it all.  (These are just my reflections of what I see.  They are not my brother's words).  Is there a sense of loss from the disappearance of freedom?  Perhaps feelings of weakness at being dependent on others?  Maybe sadness at not being able to fully participate in life?  Elements of sacrifice at difficult choices made?  For me, it's a labor of love but perhaps burden is not such a poor choice of words to describe what he feels.

eyes to see

It's Easter Sunday and from across the room, I notice the choir director's arm.  The doctor part of me never shuts off.  It's now become a fully integrated part of who I am.  I lean over and whisper to my wife, "she has something wrong with her lymphatics."  Since she was a female, my mind automatically went to breast cancer.  The lymphatics of the arm drain through nodes in the armpit.  They also drain the breast.  It's not uncommon to remove the lymph nodes in the armpit.

After the service, everyone from the church swoops down upon my brother with tears in their eyes.  It's been a bit since he's been able to go to church and they wish to express their emotions and prayers to him.  It costs him immensely both physically and emotionally to make it in today but his will is iron in its resolution to go.  Shunning the introductions, I sit quietly in the pew content to hide in the background.  I do not trust my voice to keep its tenor if I am called upon to talk.  The choir director finds me and begins to express her heartfelt sympathy for our family.  With tears and kindness in her eyes, she tells me of her battle with breast cancer.  I sense an unspoken bond with people who battle these diseases.

the air

Fox, get out of there.  Fox, no.  Fox, stay.  Fox, out.  It's Easter weekend and my brother's house is full of 4 generations worth of family members.  Included in that mix is our dog Fox.  The antithesis of everything that is a pit bull, she is an incredibly sensitive dog with a kind heart.  She keeps trying to go into the room in which my brother resides.  He's set up in their tv room with what he calls his 'princess and the pea' arrangement.  The cushions and pillows are stacked in such a way as to render the pain as minimal as possible, to the extent that's even possible.  It's not.  The air in my brother's room is thick and heavy with emotions.  Searing pain, smoldering anger, profound sadness, unrequited questions....all are emitted from the various family members who enter to simply be with my brother.  And Fox can smell them all.  She wants to be near them.  All the complex and subtle emotions that are wrapped up together and she can sense them.  She just wants to be present in the mix.  A pretty wise dog.

burden

I once had a lecture from an ENT (ear, nose, throat doc) who told the story of a patient with esophageal cancer.  The cancer got into the vocal cords and they had to be removed.  The doc told the patient, "I didn't take your voice, the cancer did.  I removed the cancer."  The doc was in essence telling the patient, "if you're looking for something to blame, don't blame me for loss of your voice.  Blame the cancer."  It seems an important distinction.  I thought it a relevant and interesting way to look at things so I filed it away in the back of my mind.

It seems relevant now.  I get the sense that both my dad and brother think of themselves as a burden.  We were all raised to be independent and self-sufficient, so for them to have to rely constantly on other people must be a hard pill to swallow.  So I now say to them, "You are not the burden.  The cancer is the burden."