It Happened to My Father
My father has a tumor the size of an orange in his body. He has lymphoma. When my mother told me, I thought it was a benign growth. The word lymphoma sounds so harmless to the medically uneducated, like a bubble-bath ingredient. Foam, phoma. Warm and fuzzy. Oh Dad has the bubble bath disease. That can be washed away easily. A good soak in the tub.
But what my father has is not easy or benign. There is no water cure for this monster. It’s hard for me to understand how this could happen. My mother has been vigilantly overseeing his diet for years. He needs help controlling his trips to the ice cream store. He has a sugar problem. He walks constantly, a man in motion playing eighteen holes of golf in the Florida sun, blowing his aging breath into his trumpet as part of a band that entertains at shopping malls, parks, and senior events. He does the right things by health standards. Near vegetarian diet, hobbies, meaningful relationships, exercise. He even belongs to a religious group. Big doings for a man who is not sure of the existence of God. What went wrong?
My mother cautions me to take this news unemotionally. My father, in his rationally endearing way says, “What’s the worst thing that could happen to me? I could die. Big deal.”
I had heard the same words five years earlier from a family friend I had grown to love and respect—someone thirty years my senior, as are my parents—who died of ovarian cancer. There is something about many members of their generation that accepts the inevitability of life with outward stoicism and a humorous remark. “There are two things that can happen. I could die and I could live. If I die there is no problem. If I don’t there are two things that could happen . . .”
My father continues this rendition I have heard since a child. Everything from illness to disappointment in love can be fixed with this there-are-only-two-things-that-can-happen tale. For my parents, life is the way it is and practical acceptance is the way to deal with life’s challenges. They are masters at sublimating their emotions to the will of God or fate or whatever they call the powers that be.
I am from the “win” generation that believes in a human being’s ability to rearrange life to make it the way we want. What is required is the right formula, the right approach, and then it is easy to get things your way. Look at all the self-help gurus who promise lasting weight loss, a perfect marriage, a high-paying job where you are treated with respect, a car, a house, a bag of groceries, a parking space, now even genetically engineered food that will eradicate disease; whatever you need, just using the right formula will do it. The right formula is intricately tied up with thought. The right thought coupled with the right action, and bingo—all will be well in my world. Everything from visualization to psychotherapy to walking on fire gives you the ability to create from within the world of your dreams.
In the Nineties, people believed there were solutions to their problems. Even those less inclined to esoteric formulas and New Age meanderings could find the right over-the-counter prescription to erase wrinkles and cure hemorrhoids. The right look would get you a fast ride up the ladder of success. The material-minded were big on motivational speakers. I am not dismissing these ideas, but I don’t believe they really confront the inevitable losses that life will bring to all.
After I hang up from my mother, I start my incantations and invocations. I light candles in the name of my father’s healing. I meditate and send him color healing vibrations. I pore through my books to find the exact shade of orange or yellow or purple—or is it green?—that will shrink his cancer. I send a prayer over the Internet to the Rebbe. I visualize him healthy and well. Not the Hassidic Rebbe (he can take care of himself). My father, of course. I symbolically take an orange and cut off little pieces each day.
But my parents know there are not always earthly solutions to problems. Or that all problems are not solved on earth.
What should I do to help my father? Light more candles? Interview his doctors? Send more healing vibrations his way? Drag him to the ends of the earth looking for innovative cures? I stop and take a breath, knowing that I don’t know what is his cure. Where is the true sickness—in soul? in body? Perhaps leaving this earth is the best thing for my father’s soul. I am mortal, what do I know? What should I wish for him?
I turn to prayer to ask. “Almighty Master of the Universe my God and the God of my forefathers, may it be your will that you speedily send a complete recovery from Heaven, a healing of the body and a healing of the spirit to . . .”
And miraculously, I gained a new perspective. I felt a belief growing in my mind like a seedling reaching for light. I came to believe and feel with the same certainty that the sun will rise in the morning and set at night that illness was a message to our deepest selves to reexamine our lives. I believe illness can also be a way to experience, in the here and now, the fruits of our actions so that when we die we can go on to a life devoid of the consequences of those actions. I don’t think illness has only a physical cause. If illness is a messenger, what is it telling us? What is this mass in my father’s system telling him? But illness is a personal message, and I have no right to presume I know its reason.
Today I read about prayer, that the reason some say prayer is the highest form of spiritual practice is that God delights in hearing from us. What a beautiful thought, God delights in hearing from us. In prayer we are making a personal connection to God. Our lives can be set up so we yearn for this conversation. Illness can push us to the edge of longing and put us in the presence of God. Perhaps illness is a small price to pay to get close to the Almighty, to bring our deepest yearning for spirituality into the light of day. In the end, whether my father overcomes his illness and lives to be a hundred is between him and God.
I have put my candles away. I am stopping my need to control the vibrations of this universe. I am arming myself with prayer. I may not be able to cure my father by my wishes, but I can let God hear my prayers for my father. These prayers originate from love. After all, if they are from my heart God will delight in them. What God will do with my prayer is between my father’s soul and Him.
Copyright 2006 by Elizabeth P. Glixman
