Poetry, Illness, and the Art of Survival

There is this poem at the very end of Jane Kenyon's book Otherwise. It's buried at the end, and if you skipped the afterword written by Kenyon's husband Donald Hall, you'd miss it. It's called The Sick Wife, and the first time I read it -- though the most physically ill I'd ever been was with the flu -- I felt disturbed and touched in a way one feels when they are completely and totally empathetic. I understood Kenyon's 'heartsick' disbelief that life went on, no matter what you as an individual were going through, no matter what trauma your family unit was sustaining; that people, in their infinitely hopeful way, would go about their daily business, even if you sat suffering.

The Sick Wife

The sick wife stayed in the car
while he bought a few groceries.
Not yet fifty,
she had learned what it's like
not to be able to button a button.

It was the middle of the day --
and so only mothers with small children
or retired couples
stepped through the muddy parking lot.

Dry cleaning swung and gleamed on hangers
in the cars of the prosperous.
How easily they moved --
with such freedom,
even the old and relatively infirm.

The windows began to steam up.
The cars on either side of her
pulled away so briskly
that it made her sick at heart.

During my first hospitalization for going bat-shit insane (clearly not my official DSM-IV diagnosis), I remember distinctly this gray, rainy, almost-evening in October. The traffic was beginning to pick up, or so I could see out the large window in the 2nd floor rec room. The rec room had been a bit more active until another patient named Jackie walked in. Jackie was in her late 60s, with the girth of a sedentary senior citizen, dressed constantly in a floor-length white nightgown and her blue bathrobe. Her standard line upon meeting a fellow patient was, "I just took a shower, and I'm all wet!" Her hair was half-white, half-red. The intruding gray was about 5 inches in length, which I took to be a sort of follicular timeline of her illness. I wasn't certain of her diagnosis, but clearly whatever it was contained a hefty helping of dementia.

Jackie was loud, belligerent and could be aggressive if you messed with her. And I do not know what Congresswoman Louise Slaughter did to Jackie, but whatever it was, it must have been serious. Jackie hated her intensely. "She's a bitch, is what she is...a bitch!" I stayed in Jackie's good graces by finding Wheel of Forture for her nightly on the rec room TV, and for making her a book of dogs cut out from magazines during craft time. (She loved dogs, and used to talk all the time about her dogs Skipper and Mike. "They bark and bite!" she'd yell. I call 'em B&B, bark and bite!")

Anyway, on that chilly almost-evening, Jackie and I were looking out the window together, watching the traffic light change color, and the traffic on Elmwood Avenue proceed. "Green means go!" she shouted. (She shouted everything, especially invectives at the food-service workers who insisted upon giving her the diabetic meal.) Looking at the people driving by, I felt insanely jealous. No doubt they were better off than me; not ill, but well, leading carefree lives filled with laughter and love, not Desipramine, Paxil and Trazadone. They didn't have to have supervision while shaving, didn't need to be buzzed out for a cigarette, didn't have to participate in god-awful group sessions about parachuting to a deserted island, and what would you bring with you? They weren't paraded around med school students, weren't asked derisively, "Just what makes you so hopeless?"

I couldn't wrap my head around this: I was there, we were there, hurting, messed up, some of us indeed hopeless, and life still went on. Rain came down, the wind blew leaves off of branches, people got into their cars with their briefcases and travel mugs and went home, windshield wipers blazing. Life didn't stop for our wounded brains and hearts. It simply went on, and those people driving in their cars that day had no clue that two damaged women watched the wheels of their cars spin and turn, until finally, they were out of sight.

*****************

Recently, I had the pleasure of being directed to a mouthful of a blog entitled Follow Lingling As She Gives Lymphoma a Beatdown. The lovely Lindsay from Suburban Turmoil nominated the entire blog for January Perfect Post, because really, when you read the whole thing, you cannot just single out a post. There isn't any post that is simply average or not as good as the one before it. All of it, every word is compelling and gorgeous and heartbreaking and hopeful. So full of love and hope and courage! Sitting in my dining room chair, reading this blog one day when my youngest was napping and my eldest was singing songs during her preschool music hour, I was instantly beside myself.

These people, this family, have been through so damn much. I just wanted to do something, anything, but felt supremely impotent. I knew that I was still smarting from being unable to help my own mother, who went through colon cancer without the family rallying that I felt necessary for such a difficult event. As I rocked my newborn girl, as I fed her again and again, held her to my breast, I wished I could just stop time for us for a minute, and travel to where I could be of service to my mother, who God knows has always been of service to me.

There was nothing I could do. I couldn't leave my family and drive to my mother's, spending the chemo months with her, cooking, cleaning, wiping dust from the tables, watching cheerful movies with her. I couldn't bring my family with me, knowing that our presence would exhaust instead of help. Instead, I did what I could over the phone, which frustrated me so much sometimes that all I could do after was put on David Gray's Lost Songs, and cry while slow-dancing with Lillian.

And there is nothing, really, I could do for Leanne and Dan and Lydia, except read and comment and pray. I know they obviously had a wide circle of family and friends and strangers rooting for them. But Jane Kenyon's poem stuck in my mind. I knew that somewhere within their nest, they must have felt something similar; must have felt, hey, we have a crisis here, and the world must come to a halt, please.

Now, though, the news is outrageously good, in the way that kicking the ass of cancer can only be. Dan, the ever-so-eloquent husband of the lymphoma-stomping Leanne, is taking a bike ride for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He's reached his goal of $4,200 to bike the 100 miles around Lake Tahoe, but his two friends Kevin and Carley still need sponsorship.

Here are their donation sites. Please, visit, go. Spend something. Tell your friends. Help them reach their goal. As Dan says, "It all goes to the same place anyway."

http://www.active.com/donate/tntrm/kmcabee

http://www.active.com/donate/tntrm/tntrmCMcAbee

Dan and Leanne and Lydia, don't worry. We're not ready to leave yet. We're still here, still rooting and still praying. And we're still supporting you, however we can.