write something every week

Becky Wiechman, Dexter High School alumna, ran 13.1 miles in the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon Event last weekend in Anchorage, Alaska. She participated in the race as a member of Team in Training, a fundraising program run by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Wiechman was running in honor of Abby Fisher, also a Dexter native. Fisher was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2007, at the age of 26. The two have been friends since the fifth grade at (what was then) Wylie Middle School.

Wiechman wasn’t a serious runner before she began working with Team in Training. “I got their brochures, and at first kind of laughed about entering a marathon, but then I started to feel like I could do this,” says Wiechman. “You always kind of struggle when somebody you care about is going through hard times. I thought, if Abby can go through Hodgkin’s, I can go through with a marathon.”

It was only until after signing up with Team in Training that Wiechman learned what a help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society had been to Fisher. “I was very much under-insured when I was first diagnosed,” says Fisher. “LLS picked up the tab for the chemotherapy costs that my health insurance just didn’t cover.” She received other help from LLS as well, including free information, connections to other Hodgkin’s patients, and reimbursement for drug and travel costs. “I could add up all the help I received from other cancer organizations, and it still wouldn’t come close to what LLS has done for me,” says Fisher.

Wiechman just wanted to make a gesture of support for Fisher, at first. She has since realized that she was helping her friend give back to LLS as a show of gratitude for their support. She also wanted to help the organization knowing that the money would make its way to others who have medical situations similar to Fisher’s. “It’s been really tough physically to do this,” Wiechman said. “This is a big commitment, and has taken a lot of effort on my part to train for this, but out of love for Abby and belief in this organization, I feel it is the least I could do.”

Wiechman first set a fundraising goal of $3500. She held events at local restaurants, including Dexter’s Pub, who graciously donated 10% of all their sales on a “fundraising day” organized by Fisher and Wiechman. Wiechman collected donations during the several months she trained. As she began to run more and more miles, she began to collect more and more money for LLS, eventually running up to 12 miles in her training runs, and raising over $5000 in total.

While Wiechman celebrates her recent success and plans for future runs, Fisher is also looking ahead to the future. “Although I can’t be sure I’m cancer-free, I’ve reclaimed most of my life and am back to doing things I love,” says Fisher. Her treatment is on hiatus until cancer begins to grow again, and she is happy to be back to work and a few evening activities, including the Dexter Community Band. Wiechman finished an MBA degree this spring and is now searching for a job. “Whichever company snaps her up is getting a prize,” says Fisher. “She can do anything she sets her mind to. She decided on a whim to run a marathon, and then trained, fundraised, flew to Alaska, and did it!” Fisher feels incredibly lucky to have Wiechman for a friend – and Wiechman feels lucky that she could help an organization that helped ensure their friendship will be able to last many more years.

I’d like to take ownership of a certain word, but I can’t quite make up my mind. The word is ambivalence, and it may own me and define me more right now than vice versa. I’ve long been friends with “ambivalence” – the comfortable voiced consonants, the scattering of vowels across the chart. Ambivalence is frequently misunderstood in English to mean indifference and/or ignorance, but its Latin roots are pleasingly precise: ambi- for “both” and val- for “choice” or “to choose”. This translation clarifies ambivalence to have none of confusion or nonchalance, but to mean straddling a fence, almost literally. When you’re ambivalent, both choices are obvious and unobfuscated, but the decision – though inevitable – isn’t yet made. And just like having one foot on either side of a split-rail, ambivalence starts out uncomfortable and becomes moreso every minute.

I find myself straddling fences and holding green up to greener too often these days. I am ambivalent about my career, my finances, my health, and even assorted relationships. It’s not that I lack options, or that I haven’t given them thought; instead it’s that each choice is so decisive. Teetering on a knife’s edge is familiar if not peaceful and every option means uncharted territory, new dangers, the dark without a lamp.

Daunting though all these ambivalences may be, throughout cancer I’ve learned a thing or two about dealing with the dark. When lost without a lamp, it’s up to you to find light. So I examined ambivalence – the word, the concept, and the feeling – and decided: ambivalence can’t be just an endless night. Ambivalence, inherently, is a choice. The state of ambivalence, then – a state in which I seem to have taken up residence – is nothing more than a state of choice.

Choice, despite my best intentions of cynicism, is wonderfully hopeful. Choice means a range of possibility exists, just waiting to be shaped to my personal preferences. Ambivalence begins to look like a crossroads with no ways blocked. Ambivalence – which means “both choices” – means only that a spread of opportunities await my action. But what does this mean to me? It means no more fences. It means no more green-greener. Ambivalence, and its state of choice, can no longer be a state of indecision. Ambivalence, then, must be a state of fresh beginnings. I must refashion my current ambivalences into springboards. A life so full of ambivalence – seemingly endlessly daunting – is now seemingly full of endless possibility.

Fully embracing ambivalence – owning the term as well as the concept – means accepting both aspects of the feeling. I will need to own the indecision, the frustration, and the confusion involved with ambivalence, as well as the hope, the excitement, and the possibility. Most importantly, redefining ambivalence for myself also means redefining my reaction to ambivalence. Ambivalence, inherently, is a choice. And now, for me, ambivalence will mean recognizing those choices – and making them.

Th reporter who did an article on Becky and I her marathon for LLS wanted me to write a guest article follow up for the paper this week. Here it is.

The first thing I express here must be gratitude. Thank you, those who came to the Dexter Pub on April 26 to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society on my behalf. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
I’ve learned a lot over the past 18 months through my experiences with cancer, and a good number of those lessons were about gratitude. On my first day of chemotherapy, I shed tears of gratitude to discover that my disease had not yet progressed to my bone marrow. On my last day of chemotherapy, I shed tears of gratitude that my family was with me to take care of me – because for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t take care of myself. But most of my lessons in gratitude weren’t based on personal experience. Most of what I learned on giving thanks came from the wise and wonderful people I met throughout my cancer journey.
I met fellow patients who had been through treatments so harsh and so long-lasting I was certain I couldn’t have withstood them. My new friends were truthful about their pain, their fatigue, and their frustration, but they were also truthful about their daily experiences – and their daily experiences were filled with joy. I and my friends discussed our gratitude – for small things, such as ginger to ease nausea or a new book by a favorite author, and for large things, such as a first visit to the Grand Canyon or a new grandchild’s laugh.
I met caregivers who had joined the field of oncology because of a personal experience – occasionally a cancer experience of his or her own, but more often, a pivotal life event such as the loss of a loved one to cancer. As these caregivers shared their histories with me while placing a needle or administering a drug, I realized that the stories they told might elsewhere be considered sad or discouraging, but that here as a part of cancer treatment, they were expressions of hope and of thanksgiving. A particularly dear nurse once said to me: “Why, everything I do is grateful – grateful I can help.”
When disaster looms large, it seems that gratitude springs up in its shadow. A dark cloud may shade our days, but it also may help us to see joys and triumphs that could have been missed in the bright busy light. With my eyes newly attuned, I’ve been able to find gratitude blooming everywhere – and I was especially overwhelmed by it last Sunday as I looked around the restaurant and found myself surrounded by warmth and support.

Ang passed away of metastatic breast cancer in late January, and I missed the memo on that somehow, and therefore missed the service and the opportunity to tell Angie’s boys how much I looked up to her. So I wrote her this letter. I’ll send it in a bottle or on a balloon someday soon. With something pink.

Dear Angie,

You were incredible. I admired you every week. I’d watch you talk about your job, your sons, your home, and your life, and I’d think how remarkable a woman you’d be for mastering it all even without cancer in the mix. Time and time again, I was able to dredge up extra courage for myself by thinking of your seemingly endless personal strength. Your constant presence at our group meetings lent me a constant presence throughout my cancer experiences. If ever I needed to know a sensible, graceful approach to a cancer snag, I could always think of you. You handled problems with relationships, career, kids, and cancer with capability and dignity. Ang, you were an amazing woman. You were an inspiration to me, and you continue to be as I work through new challenges. I wanted to tell you this when you were alive. You meant more to me than you knew, and I’m sorry I failed us both. I hope this message does reach you. I believe in you still, Ang, and I like to believe that it will.

Its impermanence is the biggest hazard of the cancer universe. My friend Nathan, who has brain cancer, isn’t doing well; I have written the following down about him. I will share it at his service if there’s an opportunity to do so.

One of the most valuable things Nathan brought to our group was a simple but very genuine sense of calm. As I got to know him, it became obvious that the calm came from Nathan’s ability to find personal peace. Bad news never overly rocked Nathan’s boat, and although I was endlessly impressed by his emotional equilibrium, I was even more impressed by his ability to impart the same sense of calm to others. As Nathan listened to the struggles of others and offered his insight or experience, he also offered an attitude of peace that was appreciated by all. When Nathan went to Israel on a trip he’d long been anticipating, he did something wonderfully thoughtful for all of us. He suggested we write down our prayers, collected them, and carried them with him on his visit to the wailing wall, where he inserted our prayers into cracks in the wall according to custom. For Nathan to show such tenderness and care for his friends during his own vacation meant so much to me and all the members of our group. Nathan had found a way to share with us his calm even as he was absent from our weekly gatherings. I hope, too, that today each of us is able to feel a little bit of the peace that Nathan so freely exuded and so generously shared.

Right before Christmas, I went to Jill’s memorial service. Jill was a member of my cancer support group and she died of breast cancer (which had spread to her lungs and brain) after fighting for ten years. I wore pink, mindfully, and I saw from the pulpit that the church was in fact a sea of pinks. Here is what I wrote and said that day for Jill:

I cannot think Jill without thinking pink. Even on Jill’s blue days – wearing powder blue or singing the blues – she was pink through and through. Pink is a color of life, and life was one thing Jill was full of till the end. No matter how tough things had been lately, she’d come through the door week after week – more often than not with a piece of chocolate in her hand. We reserved for her the largest chair in the room and she filled it up – what she lacked in physical size, she made up for in spirit. We admired her knowledge, her honesty, and most of all her joy. I was often in awe as Jill shared her immersion in happinesses or simple strength in struggles, or when she described an idea such as the special journals she was creating for each of the people she loved. Although I’ll miss Jill as a member of our group, I cannot say I will feel an empty space in the room or in my heart. There’s still plenty of Jill’s wisdom and wit I’ll carry with me as part of my cancer-fighting toolkit. I am so grateful to have known Jill, and I am proud to have been her friend.

Here’s a poem I wrote a couple weeks ago.

I used to love you like dancing
rarely therefore clumsily
in equal parts hands and eyes, yes and no

I used to love you like talking
sensical, directed
except glorious accidental moments of truth
sometimes coming oh so close together

I used to love you like smiling
Sudden simple joy
miscellaneous outer flashes
of inner acceptance

I used to love you like breathing
effortless security
an internal rhythm
of you, me, you, me, youme, youme, youme

I used to love you like asking
confident uncertainty
the key it definitely wasn’t
suddenly fitting the lock

I used to love you like swimming
reality blurred but visible
progress smooth, steady, slow, seamless

I used to love you like aching
pain memorized, befriended,
hurt folding down under
layers of life goes on

I love you now like thinking
Like walking, like sinking
I love you now like waiting
Like knowing, like waiting

This week I wrote a villanelle. It’s a poetry scheme involving repetition and rhyme. I picked the first line from Eddie, the second from Dave.

Breathing in deeply all that is
Leaving behind what won’t, what’s not
The only way round is through

A gash in the sky, an open slash
Silence pours out in this peace I’ve bought
Breathing in deeply all that is

I wait to want, wish for a clash
Of will, of way, not could but ought
The only way round is through

A river runs by, I kneel to wash
My hands, my hope, my unquiet thought
Breathing in deeply all that is

Uncertainties whisper against me, a rush
The sky closes, deep darkness wrought
The only way round is through

I ford, I forge, wearing water for a sash
Dreams in a sieve, these errant creatures caught
Breathing in deeply all that is
The only way round is through

Girls cry lustily as the crispness of November hits their fresh untested lungs. Girls are placed gently in infant seats, swaddled with blue blankets. Girls fall silent as the engine hums, sleep smiling all the way home for the first time.
Girls and their friends cram into the car, giggling and shrieking with excitement. Girls pretend embarassment but are thrilled by the cardboard sign on the tailgate proclaiming their shared birthday to the neighborhood, the world! Girls tumble out at a hotel, eight miles and an exotic indoor swimming pool world away.
Girls run through the July heat and hop in the car, coming home from Granny’s house. Girls’ legs stick to brown vinyl seats, the air is thick and sticky. Girls love the family station wagon; scramble over the seat to sit in the way back. Girls can’t see, but their mother is crying.
Girls get out of the wagon, walk past a strange car in the drive, little, blue. Girls listen to their father for a while, watch him put his suitcase in the strange car and drive away. Girls comfort their mother on the couch until one puts on rollerskates and clunks out the door.
Girls wait at the window for the little blue car, snatch up tote bags and run to their dad. One girl gets in the front seat, the other dashes back inside, crying – she will NOT visit her father. The other girl persists, inhaling the ghostly scent of melted crayons that hangs inside the little blue car.
Girls stand together before “the OLD car”, remembering the BirthdayMobile, contemplating mementos. Girls pocket the hood ornament, the dashboard clock. Girls slide into “the NEW car”, close the precision-balanced doors gently, so gently. Girls miss the old familiar comfort of the past, a childhood contained within two Ford wagons.
Girls wait at the window for another little blue car, a NEW little blue car, climb in resolutely, apologize to their father for missing his wedding. Girls enter their father’s new house and feel excitement and guilt, whisper about it furtively.
Girls learn to drive at home in the no longer quite so NEW car. One girl hugs the white line; one girl hugs the yellow. Girls sigh when instructed by their mother, but still refuse to ride while the other is driving.
Girls run out to the ancient sports car, $100 each, late! can’t start it in the cold, press the clutch! I AM! Girls make it to school just in time.
Girls return home for a holiday in red cars. One girl shifts her hatchback smoothly, cuts the engine and coasts into the drive. One girl is mocked for still “getting used to” her new car off the lot.
Girls drive separately to “the OTHER house”, still secretly afraid of the other at the wheel. Girls leave quickly, one turning left, one right, neither thinking of the other. Girls, each in her own car, put distance between themselves more quickly and easily than ever before.

On Tuesday night after pizza and euchre, three girlfriends and I watched election returns on an old set of rabbit ears. As results tipped in favor of my candidate, I became more and more filled with pride, with hope, and with something that felt a lot like patriotism. I was proud to be the tiniest cog in the gears of this American process; proud to have made my contribution to something as large and important as this 2008 election. Others, nameless and faceless to me, did their parts just as I did. If not for a common vision and a common belief that what we were doing mattered, none of us would have had any motivation – or any effect.

Next to pride, I felt hope. Even though our country’s current situations present seemingly insurmountable challenges, there is hope. Hope brought by not necessarily a new leader, but by a new perspective, a new set of ideas – fresh eyes and fresh hands for the old problems. This hope is evidenced by the sheer number of folks who did cast a vote, raise a voice, and make an effort that was small until it joined with so many others.

As I drove home, I pondered. I’d thought that November 15 would be my best day this month. I’ve been looking forward to this year’s birthday as an opportunity to celebrate one year of victory over cancer. Instead, I realized, I am more proud today than I could possibly be in two weeks. Then another realization hit me: that didn’t have to be so. I was energized and inspired by discovering my ability as an American citizen to effect change, and I should be equally inspired and energized as a cancer fighter extraordinaire.

Just as I am one American believing in hope and doing my part in the recovery of our ailing country, I am one cancer patient believing in hope and actively working at my own recovery from lymphoma – and I’m also campaigning for others in the same situation. I discovered the same feelings of pride connected to my identification as a cancer survivor as I had connected to my identification as a U.S. citizen. I discovered that same pride at being a small part of something larger than myself – something which had power individuals do not.

It’s easy to forget in the course of daily struggles that I’m not on my own in a fight against cancer. Just as I was one vote of millions this November 4, every day I am one voice against cancer – one among thousands. Cures and remissions are easier to believe in and hope for when you know you’re far from the only one feeling that way. Hope means believing even though the odds are against you, even though the outcome may be unknowable, and even though you alone may not make any difference at all.

From now on, when I get discouraged, I’ll remember the feelings I found on election night. I’ll remember that no cause is hopeless if enough people put their minds together, and that none of us are alone in fighting our personal battles. When I got home that night, I turned on Barack Obama’s victory speech, and his rallying cry – Yes We Can – meant to me something altogether new. Yes I can. I can do this … I can conquer cancer, every day, and in so many ways. And so can the rest of my cancer posse, near and far, those I know and love as well as those I have never met. We can do it together and separately, and we will – we do – make a difference.