Choosing Life

While I was in the hospital last month, a friend of mine from school sent home with Steve a book called My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. The author is a doctor who counsels patients with life-threatening and otherwise devastating illness. She herself is a fellow sufferer, having had Crohn's disease since she was 17 years old. Her grandfather, who died when she was seven, had been an orthodox Jewish rabbi who managed to pass along to her much of his wisdom before his death. Although I did not read this book while I was in the hospital, I picked it up last week, thinking it might be just the right kind of reading. I shared with you earlier how difficult it has been for me to read novels because I am having much trouble right now following a lengthy narrative over hundreds of pages. This book is comprised of very short chapters that do not necessarily build on each other, although certainly there are thematic elements that are woven throughout the book. It was the perfect read for me, and it is a wonderful, powerful work. I highly recommend it and would like to share just a few of the ideas that comforted me as I read.

As my surgery date nears (two weeks tomorrow), I am beginning to be fearful of the procedure. It seems so wrong to me that someone will be shaving my head, slicing through my scalp, sawing through and removing a piece of my skull, cutting through the membranes that protect my brain, and being right there. It makes me think of the ancient Israelites and their belief in the power that lay in the holy of holies, that part of the temple where the ark of the covenant was kept, where only the most devout high priest could go. Some might argue that the heart is the "holy of holies" of the body, as life could be sustained without a brain as long as the heart were still beating. I disagree. For me, the brain is it. Who we are, what we are capable of contributing, how we live and laugh and love, all lie in the power of the brain. And so if there were any way I could escape this surgery and remain healthy, oh boy! That is the path I would choose.

However, as Remen writes, "In my experience, no one ever really chooses surgery or chemotherapy. People only choose life and then welcome whatever means are offered to them in order to have it" (278). And so this is it, I suppose. I choose life. It is ironic that although my life was much busier before I became sick, it was not fuller. It was hectic and fast-paced and crammed full of activity, but I think I could argue that I am living more meaningfully now, when my days have been stripped of most extra activities. I go to school, do a little teaching, and come home. If I'm lucky, the Yankees are on TV (they better be--we're paying enough for them!) and the kids are at home and I can cook dinner and share a meal with them. When Steve gets home we might watch a little TV. I'll read a little, maybe write a little, laugh with the kids over something silly that happened to one of them at school that day. But that's about it.

If you could have seen me a few months ago, it was a different story. I often didn't get home until late at night. I studied constantly. I wrote pages and pages of literary analysis. I graded student essays. I read and prepared and lesson-planned for school. And read and prepared and wrote for my graduate classes. I sure was busy. But I wasn't having any fun. Don't get me wrong. Having a tumor isn't fun. Preparing for brain surgery isn't fun. Spending a week in the hospital with meningitis is about as far from fun as you can get. But my new pared down life is a better life. Spending time with my kids (who are getting pretty close to grown) is fun. Watching baseball guilt-free because there is nothing else I should be doing instead is fun. Cooking for my family is fun. Serving a few hours at church is fun. Spending "chair time" with my husband is fun. And slowly it is becoming clear to me that this is a life. That the stillness I am experiencing now is where the real value in life lies. I don't have to be busy to be living. In fact, my hunch is that it's better not to be.

In this stillness, I am finding it easier to pay attention to what matters most. And what I have decided matters most are our dealings with other people. Places don't matter. Possessions certainly don't matter. People do. This is a lesson Dr. Remen learned from her grandfather. In one of the best chapters in the book, she describes the Jewish custom of the lighting of the menorrah during Hannukah, and the way in which each candle is lit from another. She writes that her grandfather told her, "the story of Hannukah says that God's light burns in the darkness even without oil, and it is so. That is one of the miracles of the light. But there is more. There is a place in everyone that can carry the light. God has made us this way. When God says 'LET THERE BE LIGHT,' he is speaking to us personally. He is telling us what is possible, how we might choose to live" (130).

Yes. This is a worthy choice, to bear light. To bring light to those who are in darkness. Not to own more things, or to visit more places, but to take care of more people. To be a blessing to them, and to the world because of them. We are here for a short time. What we do here matters. How we choose to live matters. For me, I choose to be light.