Cancer and a “Normal Life”: The Concept of a Gratitude Journal, by Leah

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January 29, 2008 - 9:27 pm email to a friend printer friendly view / write comments

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Dr. West

Here’s more on methods for coping with cancer, by Leah de Roulet:

Hello again! Last time I talked about ways to cope with the roller coaster of cancer, and I was reminded of one I left out when I read a column recently in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, or PI, one of our major newspapers here. This one is about keeping a Gratitude Journal; although it really doesn’t have to be more than 2 or 3 things you can find to be grateful about each and every day. As I read this article, I thought it would be wonderful to pass it along, and I hope you get as much out of it as I did. I really wish I had written it myself! Our social work team is passing copies of this out in our support groups. It is entitled “Forget normal; take life as it is“, by PI columnist Chi-Dooh LI, published in late December and available here. I have deleted a few paragraphs of the beginning of the article, but here are the highlights:

Here’s what I wanted - and didn’t get - for Christmas this year: to remake the month of December. To turn back the clock. To have things turn out differently. For my friend to walk out of the hospital alive and healthy. For drug addiction to go to hell instead of messing with a precious human being with a great mind.

…During dark moments this month I have pondered why life that can be so sweet must inevitably be jarred and marred by such heartache. Why is one inseparable from the other? Why do tears inevitably follow laughter? Why does sorrow always stalk joy?

Can’t we just order up “life” with no pain, please, like we do Thai food, with zero to five stars spice rating? Others can have their lives spiced just as they wish. As for me, emotional pain tends to shut me down. Maybe one-star pain is OK, but I much prefer none at all.

I found the answer to my questions, while mentally exhausted and emotionally numb, in an unlikely place-sitting in front of the television watching a rerun of “Tombstone” an entertaining Hollywood rendition of Wyatt Earp & Co.

Late in the film, a dying Doc Holliday asks Earp what he is searching for, and Wyatt responds, “Just to live a normal life”. To which Holliday responds, in a line memorably delivered by Val Kilmer: “There is no normal life, Wyatt. There’s just life. You live it.”

Our definitions of what might be a “normal life” will likely range all over the landscape. Mine naively presupposes a life with minimal pain.

On a broader scale, was 40 years of living under the threat of thermonuclear warfare during the Cold War “normal” life? Or would the term better describe the hiatus between 1989, when the Iron Curtain came down, and Sept.11, 2001, when our existence was abruptly threatened by terrorists who want to eradicate our way of life and our ways of thinking?

How would victims of floods and other natural disasters define “normal” life? Surely they would find it hard to accept that losing your home and even loved ones is normalcy.

That’s why the wisdom of Doc Holliday’s pronouncement bears remembering. Life will always be a cornucopia of the unpredictable. Our attempts to define it or put it into a neat or manageable box will do us as much good as trying to bottle the air we breathe.

Forget about normal. Live life, such as it is, with all it brings-the very bad, the wonderfully good, the repulsively ugly, and the astonishingly beautiful!

(Leah now) When I think about what I am grateful for at the end of the day, it is usually not anything very fancy or complicated, it may just be something astonishingly beautiful. As an example, here in Seattle, it is so rainy, cloudy, and overcast, that most of the time we cannot even see out most famous landmark, Mount Rainier. This past week, it was very cold and very clear, and almost every day, the Mountain was “out”, as we say when it is visible in all its majesty. I am always grateful when I can see the Mountain; indeed, I can hardly tear my eyes away from it even when I am driving. I am grateful for the birds that come to feast at my bird feeder, for the friends who call to say they miss me if I have been inattentive, and for the brilliant full moon last night. These are just items for my Gratitude Journal; I know I could come up with a lot more if I tried. How many can you come up with each day? Nothing fancy, 3 or 4 will do, and remember; just pieces of what makes up our lives if we pay attention!

So here’s to life-just life in 2008!

More to come,

Leah

Posted in: Social Work/Coping with Cancer                     email to a friend printer friendly