My brother died last week, after months of a brutal, gut-wrenching struggle with pancreatic cancer. We have been brothers and very good friends all our lives, and I never wanted him to leave. Still, I was immensely relieved when he yielded to the cancerous monster. So that he could rest. Over this time, I have been consumed by his struggle, sitting at his bedside, holding his hand, trying and failing to engage him on one subject after another—trying anything to divert his attention from the pain. It was an effort in futility.
From the moment he received his diagnosis, Kenny was in despair, knowing that his days would be few and that, like our father, years before, he would become a skeletal, tormented version of himself. Nothing we—his wife, his friends, nor I—could do eased the pain or fooled him about its course. With each new treatment regimen, we cheered him on. “Eat, eat, it will make you stronger. It will allow you to do some more chemo therapy and that will give you a few more good days.” But he would have none of it, could imagine nothing that would interrupt the ineluctable progress of his disease.
Sometimes he’d comply, taking a single spoonful of the institutional and ever-present apple sauce the hospital provided. But he complied more for our sake than for his own, or so it seemed. And he’d whisper to me: “Why do it? I’m just going to die.”
Each of us, the ones who loved him, had our own wishes and our own narratives about the course of th3e disease. “Don’t throw away the time you’ve got.” “Find or turn to a spiritual home, even if it’s only faintly visible.” “At least remember that you’ve had a good long life.” “Know that we love you,” as if he could carry that love to the other side, a side he never believed in. But our images and stories were our own, not his. He kept telling us that, but it was generally too hard for us to hear.
I have occasionally known the fear that Kenny spoke of but I’ve never known the despair, the hopeless agony that he lived, day after day. I don’t know if I have ever seen life—as it is, unvarnished by beliefs and dreams, before these last months.
Throughout my life, I have found succor and balance in painful and frightening moments by summoning hope that things will get better. Not just hope, belief. I have always believed that, with effort, sometimes great effort, that I would find a way through the crises of my life. And almost nothing has arisen to dissuade me.
It may be that while my brother’s death now dominates my thoughts, as the pain and loss subside, I’ll return to my belief in my own efficacy. But I don’t think so. Rather, it feels like these months have humbled me and ushered in a world view that has been slowly brewing for years. These days have made a realist out of me. The world that I see now is a world as it is, neither good nor bad. It’s not what I want it to be—or what I fear it to be. It is not fundamentally changed by my efforts.
These days, for example, I’ve been struggling on a number of fronts, each of which I would characteristically approach with hope and belief that things will get better. I can’t avert my gaze from the march of authoritarianism regimes throughout the world, with the possibility that my beloved country, too, will fall in that direction. I see the Russian war on Ukraine, with 10 million refugees and murdered civilians. And, while the Ukrainians are putting up a brave and brilliant fight, that won’t change the death and displacement of war. I see my body’s downward path and the diminished role that I play in the life of my communities; and, no matter how disciplined I am with my diet and exercise, that path won’t fundamentally change.
None of these trends seem reversible, certainly not through my efforts. I hate the suffering with every fiber in my body, but, more and more, I accept it as part of life’s course.
And here’s an interesting discovery: My acceptance comes without despair. I don’t feel lost or depressed. And, for the most part, it also comes without the serenity that I thought such acceptance had promised. A certain grim peacefulness has fallen over me. I feel myself, at last, to be in rhythm with the world, not someone acting on it.
Just the other day, I shared these thoughts with a friend who reminded me of William Butler Yeats epitaph: “Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by.” I think I finally understand what Yeats means.
Barry Dym 