Revisiting old blogposts is taking me on an emotional rollercoaster. Being on the other side — having things I was most afraid of actually coming true — gives the pieces a whole new meaning. Of course one of my main fears was that my cancer would return. Of course, it has, and worse. The metastases I have now are exactly what I feared most after my treatment was complete the first time around.
Again, I’d like to say that even when I feared it, as I would think most people who have had cancer do have fear of cancer returning/metastasizing, hearing the words “You have Stage IV cancer” bears no relationship whatsoever to the fear you have when it’s a hypothetical. The anxiety, the panic, the worry… all of those were only a fraction of what it felt like to be told it was actually true. This is what my life will be.
As I re-read the post below I got emotional. The words I wrote here over two years ago are still so true for me. This post captures my fervent wish to document my thoughts and feelings for my children. I still feel a strong desire to be understood. Perhaps some of this is because I think in many cases people with cancer do not feel understood.
Katie and I became friends after I read her book. Great friends. We talk about Suzy. We talk about french fries and silly socks and Pilates. We talk about her work and we talk about our kids. We talk about cancer. We talk about the most frivolous parts of life and the most serious. As I write below, “Even after her death, Suzy has the lovely ability to inspire, to entertain, to be present.” In life, so does her daughter, Katie.
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There comes a point in your life when you realize that your parents are people too. Not just chaffeurs, laundresses, baseball-catchers, etc.– but people. And when that happens, it is a lightbulb moment, a moment in which a parent’s humanity, flaws, and individuality come into focus.
If you are lucky, like I am, you get a window into that world via an adult relationship with your parents. In this domain you start to learn more about them; you see them through the eyes of their friends, their employer, their spouse, and their other children.
Yesterday I sat transfixed reading Katherine Rosman’s book If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Reporter’s Notebook cover to cover. The book arrived at noon and at 11:00 last night I shut the back cover and went to sleep. But by the middle of the night I was up again, thinking about it.
I had read an excerpt of the book in a magazine and had already been following Katie on Twitter. I knew this was going to be a powerful book for me, and I was right. Katie is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and went on a mission to learn about her mother after her mother died in June, 2005 from lung cancer. In an attempt to assemble a completed puzzle of who her mother was, Katie travels around the country to talk with those who knew her mother: a golf caddy, some of her Pilates students, her doctors, and even people who interacted with Suzy via Ebay when she started buying up decorative glass after her diagnosis.
Katie learns a lot about her mother; she is able to round out the picture of who her mother was as a friend, a wife, a mother, a strong and humorous woman with an intense, fighting spirit. These revelations sit amidst the narrative of Katie’s experience watching her mother going through treatment in both Arizona and New York, ultimately dying at home one night while Katie and some family members are asleep in another room.
I teared up many times during my afternoon getting to know not only Suzy, but also Katie and her sister Lizzie. There were so many parts of the book that affected me. The main themes that really had the mental gears going were those of fear, regret, control, and wonder.
I fear that what happened to Suzy will happen to me:
My cancer will return.
I will have to leave the ones I love.
I will go “unknown.”
My children and my spouse will have to care for me.
My needs will impinge on their worlds.
The day-to-day caretaking will overshadow my life, and who I was.
I will die before I have done all that I want to do, see all that I want to see.
As I read the book I realized the tribute Katie has created to her mother. As a mother of three children myself, I am so sad that Suzy did not live to see this accomplishment (of course, it was Suzy’s death that spurred the project, so it is an inherent Catch-22). Suzy loved to brag about Katie’s accomplishments; I can only imagine if she could have walked around her daily life bragging that her daughter had written a book about her… and a loving one at that.
Rosman has not been without critics as she went on this fact-finding mission in true reporter-style. One dinner party guest she talked with said, ” … you really have no way of knowing what, if anything, any of your discoveries signify.” True: I wondered as others have, where Suzy’s dearest friends were… but where is the mystery in that? To me, Rosman’s book is “significant” (in the words of the guest) because it shows how it is often those with whom we are only tangentially connected, those with whom we may have a unidimensional relationship (a golf caddy, an Ebay seller, a Pilates student) may be the ones we confide in the most. For example, while Katie was researching, she found that her mother had talked with relative strangers about her fear of dying, but rarely (if ever) had extended conversations about the topic with her own children.
It’s precisely the fact that some people find it easier to tell the stranger next to them on the airplane things that they conceal from their own family that makes Katie’s story so accessible. What do her discoveries signify? For me it was less about the details Katie learned about her mother. For me, the story of her mother’s death, the process of dying, the resilient spirit that refuses to give in, the ways in which our health care system and doctors think about and react to patients’ physical and emotional needs– all of these are significant. The things left unsaid as a woman dies of cancer, the people she leaves behind who mourn her loss, the way one person can affect the lives of others in a unique way… these are things that are “significant.”
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the book. My head spun with all of the emotions it raised in me. I think that part of the reason writing has become so important to me is precisely because I do realize that cancer can return at any moment. And if you don’t have an author in the family who might undertake an enormous project as Katie did, where will that explanation of who you were — what you thought — come from?
Is my writing an extension of my desire to control things when cancer has taken away so much of this ability?
Is part of the reason I write an attempt to document my thoughts, my perspective for after I am gone… am I, in a smaller way, trying to do for myself what Katie did for her mother?
If I don’t do it, who will do it for me?
And in my odd way of thinking, am I trying to save anyone the considerable effort of having to work to figure out who I was– deep down?
My blog originally had the title “You’d Never Know”: I am telling you things about myself, my worldview, and my life, that you would otherwise have no knowledge of. One of the things people say to me all the time is, “You’d never know to look at you that you had cancer.” After hearing this comment repeatedly I realized that much of our lives are like that:
If we don’t tell someone — share our feelings and experiences — are our lives the proverbial trees falling (unheard) in the forest?
What if you die without being truly understood?
Would that be a life wasted?
If you don’t say things for yourself can you count on others to express them for you?
Further, can anyone really know anyone else in her entirety?
After a loved one dies, there always seems to be at least one mystery person: an individual contacts the family by email, phone, or in person to say, “I knew your loved one: this is how I knew her, this is what I remember about her, and this is what she meant to me.” I know that this happened when Barbara (my beloved mother-in-law) died suddenly in a 2009 car crash. There are stories to be told, memories to be shared. The living gain knowledge about their loved one. Most often, I think families find these insights comforting and informative.
Katie did the work: she’s made a tribute to her mother that will endure not only in its documentation of the person her mother was (and she was quite a character!) but also in sharing her with all of us.
Even after her death, Suzy has the lovely ability to inspire, to entertain, to be present.
I could talk more about the book, Katie’s wonderful writing, and cancer, but I would rather you read it for yourself. I’m still processing it all, making sense of this disease and how it affects families, and being sad that Katie’s children didn’t get to know their grandmother. Katie did have the joy of telling her mother she was pregnant with her first child, but Suzy did not live long enough to see her grandson born. In a heartwarming gesture, Katie names her son Ariel, derived from Suzy’s Hebrew name Ariella Chaya.
I thank Katie for sharing her mother with me, with us. As a writer I learned a lot from reading this book. I’ve said many times recently that “we don’t need another memoir.” I was so wrong. That’s like saying, “I don’t need to meet anyone new. I don’t need another friend.” Truth is, there are many special people. Katie and Suzy Rosman are two of them.
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Beautiful piece. I love all of your posts, but this one has many amazing layers and symmetry. Somehow everything makes sense, even things that don’t usually make any sense at all, and they make sense in a very comforting way. Thank you.
Cindy (21)-The JPM handoff kept the FDIC out of WM.The FD&7C#821I;s tapped out. IMO, they will be the next explosion. Right after the first big bank run.
I feel like the beauty of her book became that much more layered and nuanced with this essay about it.
Ever grateful you are bringing words to this devastating experience. Ever wishing you did not have to.
I was equally as moved by Katie’s book – moved to tears, peals of laughter and thoughtful self-reflection but I can only imagine how it impacted you. You expressed your connection to Suzy, Katie and their stories so beautifully. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you for sharing. I am so moved by your thoughts.
What a beautiful post, as usual.
I too fear being a proverbial tree falling in the forest: going unheard, unknown, forgotten. I love how you weave your old posts (which I have never read) into your current world but with Stage IV glasses. Brilliant. Important. (So important!) You most definitely will *not* be forgotten, Lisa. You are writing your life as you are living it: truthfully, honestly, sadly, bravely, vulnerably. Thank you.
Another book I now must read. I am the mother afraid that my children, now young adults won’t know who I really am. Or my friends. And I am like you and everyone else who has ever had to deal with cancer – waiting for the damned bomb to drop and hear the “it’s back”. And the misunderstood and misinterpreted. Lisa, thanks for writing not only to leave a story for others but to guide more of us to get out from under the covers and start telling our stories.
My children have grown up with cancer, first a form of leukemia and more recently breast cancer. My middle child has made several video blogs about this, as well as run a marathon with Team in Training. You can view her video about growing up with cancer (from a teen’s perspective) here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrzIep9YApM&list=UU4j_IbfyleteORFuF2ZBdjQ&index=7 I have really enjoyed reading your blogs recently. They so often echo my own feelings and thoughts.
Lisa, i only have gotten to know you through these posts, but i now have this sense of you as a very dear friend facing a momentous struggle with unbelievable grace and wisdom; a cousin just received a diagnosis of breast cancer and i immediately thought of you and wondered what can i share with her that i have learned from you. What i came up with is sharing with her how important she is to me; what a special person she is to me and many members of the family. So, thank you for the inspiration you provide to reach out.
This broke me open. You can say out loud, my deepest thoughts and fears about having cancer and dying an unknown. As hard as this was to read, I want to read more. I want to understand you better and better.
Your writing here, both the original pieces and your comments on them, for your children, your husband, your brother, your parents, your extended family and friends, ensures you will not be forgotten. I’m a writer; I know what it takes to move the words from the inside of your head and heart onto the page with some semblance of their original depth and meaning intact. It astonishes me that you are continuing to do this now. I admire your strength and accomplishment. Your presence in my life has changed the way I think and feel about certain things, and I am at much more of a remove than others in your life who I know you touch deeply and memorably.