Surrender

After He Said Cancer | A Memoir

Surrender

Sometimes, when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.-- Unknown

Decorative white roses and swirls adorned the ceiling in thick, white plaster high above me. Vintage globe chandeliers emitted a dim, yellowish light. A giant wall clock with Roman numerals loomed over the passengers in the station. It was built in the early 1900’s to replace a train station that burned to the ground in the Great Seattle Fire. Before it burned down, thousands of people had come through Seattle, arriving by train and departing by boat, on their way north to the Yukon Gold Rush.

“The 6 PM Cascades train to Vancouver is now boarding,” announced a woman over the loudspeaker and the crowd began to shuffle towards the doors.

Gratefully, I followed the crowd heading to the exit. The train was 10 minutes late and I was anxious to board and start my journey. I was heading to one of my favorite scientific conferences in Canada, but more importantly there was something I needed to do on the train.

The crowd thinned into a single line on the platform as we walked toward the end of the train. I looked at the passengers that were already onboard through the windows of the rain-streaked cars. For a moment, I wondered who they were and where their journey had begun. Maybe one of them also planned to have a uncomfortable conversation with themself on the train.

I found the last car, settled into my seat, and closed my eyes. Soon the train came to life with a rhythmic and gentle rocking motion. Within twenty minutes, we had left Seattle and the train was hugging the rugged shore of the Puget Sound on a northerly course. It was raining, but not as hard as it had rained earlier in the week. I could still see a light blue sky rising out of the darker blue-gray sea. Small rolling waves were hitting the narrow strips of beach that appeared from time to time, leaving a whitish foam.

My soul was at home in this landscape. On these rocky beaches, I had fallen in love with my husband and introduced our daughters to sea life. I could remember the joy of our labrador retriever the first time she took a swim in the ocean. The smell of the cold and salty sea breeze was familiar and comforting. If ever there was a time to face my demons, it was now.

For weeks, I had promised myself that I would use this time to wrestle with something a friend told me had helped her navigate grief. I could recall her words to me with ease. And when she spoke, I had the feeling that she knew what I needed to do to heal.

Surrender, she said. Your chest will feel lighter.

A flash of anger passed over me and my chest tightened. I had never surrendered to anything, at least nothing as big and meaningful as this. I had not given up on my patients, my students, my marriage, or my children. When life got tough, I got tougher. Why did I need to surrender to the situation? Couldn’t I just keep fighting tooth and nail for him?

The wind must have picked up because the waves crashing with more energy against the shore. Small whitecaps were scattered in the distance, and I could just make out Whidbey and Camano Islands rising out of the sea. My mother and I had run a punishing half-marathon on Whidbey Island 20 years ago. It was another example of how I had persevered when the going was tough. Now, it seemed that the more I fought the grief, the more I fought myself.

Suddenly, a brown body surfaced near the shore and then dove under a wave. Several more brown heads bobbed up and down. I could just make out their tiny ears as the train sped by. Sea lions. What joyful creatures! A few seconds later, the train had left them behind.

After turning a corner, the sea became considerably calmer. Narrow sections of sandy beach were dotted with driftwood and large gray rocks. Near the shore, the water was so still that I could see through the bluish water to the shallow bottom. The white and gray colors at the bottom were presumably more sand and rocks. More islands were visible now. Likely the San Juan islands.

My thoughts returned to my husband’s cancer and the idea of surrendering. She was the third person in my life to tell me that this would help me heal my grief. First, it was grief therapist who told me that if I could accept the situation, I would feel better. A conversation with a hospice chaplain led him to the same conclusion. And now it was my friend saying the same thing, but with slightly different words.

I didn’t like the word “accept” in this context and a small flame of annoyance passed through me. What…just accept his cancer? We hadn’t asked for this to come into our lives. I had two daughters that needed their father. Hell, I needed him.

A part of me was convinced that I had already accepted his cancer. Medically, I knew everything about his cancer that could be found in his chart – the tumor size, the number of cancerous lymph nodes, the tumor markers, and what the scans had shown. The reality of his cancer was far too clear for me.

Unconditional surrender, she said, was the key to her ability to navigate her grief journey. When she was very young, she had lost her mother to breast cancer. Fast forward 40 years later, she lost her wife of 25 years to breast cancer. In both cases, she had been their caregiver as their health spiraled and in their final days.

“Once it was clear that she would not survive, she decided to go gracefully,” she said. “This made it an exquisitely painful, but also exquisitely beautiful journey. I have never felt closer to another human being. And I have never given more of my entire self to another being. It was -- for lack of a better word -- a very holy experience,” she said.

My eyes watered as I began to understand. The dying process of someone I love deeply could only be holy if I completely surrendered. And gave everything to the caregiving process. There would be no room and no time for wrestling and fighting with myself. It would be the greatest gift I could ever give, and ever receive, to be fully present in this time for my husband.

A lump was forming in the back of my throat, and I looked out the window to hide my tears. Outside the train, the sky was growing darker, and daylight was receding.

“Your suffering has led to fear and overwhelmed your thinking,” she said. “In the process, you have lost touch with the reality that there is very little you can do to change the outcome.”

She was right. Holding on to the fear of grief, the pain in my chest, and the idea that I had even one ounce of control in this process could only push me towards more pain. Surrendering was the key to my peace, but I would need to come up with a different phrase that felt less like “giving up”. It would need to feel authentic to me, and my experience as a physician and a scientist.

Outside the train, blackness had swallowed the sea, the islands, and the sky. We would be approaching Bellingham soon. I took a breath, closed my eyes, and tried to clear my brain. The rhythmic back and forth motion of the train was comforting.

What if I told myself not to “surrender” or “accept” his cancer, but something like, “what will be…will be”? Sure, I was splitting words. But this felt closer to what I could embrace. At least, it was a path forward.  

What will be...will be...

Warmth began to find its way into my chest. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt a little hopeful.

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