Cancer: A Journey
My wife has terminal cancer, and so Suleika Jaouad鈥檚 memoir is deeply personal to me.
Laura鈥檚 cancer diagnosis rattled our world(s). It shattered our sense that life would carry on, our trust that tomorrow was a certainty. We were a healthy couple, barely forty, with two vibrant kids. And then, we weren鈥檛. In a blink, the ground beneath our feet shifted.
My grand-father-in-law used to say, 鈥淚f you have your health, you are a millionaire.鈥� Oh, that I鈥檇 appreciated his wisdom when we had the treasured wealth of Laura鈥檚 health.
In her memoir, Jaouad grapples with this same lament, namely the truth that only the profoundly sick can fully appreciate the comparative value of genuine healthiness. She鈥檚 not unlike Moses after he comes down from Mount Sinai. In receiving the Ten Commandments, he鈥檚 come too close to the face of Eternity. It鈥檚 an exposure that鈥檚 changed him and left him radiant with a deeper wisdom.
Jaouad is similarly radiant.
Cancer memoirs often take one of two forms. The first group is published after the patient has died, frequently with a prologue or afterwards by a surviving friend or spouse or partner. These memoirs intend to teach us about the fight, the pain, and the losses caused by cancer.
The second group includes those that tell of beating the disease. I fought. I won. You can too. These stories intend to empower, motivate, and inspire.
Jaouad鈥檚 memoir takes a different tact, one that, I think, better explores life鈥檚 lessons.
What Jaouad wants us to see is the journey of life. The voyage. She wants us to appreciate that one can plan a path. Indeed, she probably wants us to plan. But, she also knows that every voyage can be 鈥� no鈥� will be. Every voyage will be met with a storm at some point.
Will the storm sink the ship and end the voyage? Perhaps. Will it be survivable? Maybe. We cannot cheat life鈥檚 narrative and read the last page first. We lack the historian鈥檚 20/20 hindsight.
We live in the present, which is an interstitial space.
If we hope fully to explore and examine this journey of ours 鈥� be it the college years you are about to begin or life more broadly 鈥� we have to come to terms with the liminality of our very being.
Tim McGraw鈥檚 ballad tells us that there is value, perhaps even privilege, to be found in living 鈥渓ike you are dying.鈥� I cannot say I鈥檇 necessarily run off to croon about this way of living as McGraw does. It鈥檚 a hard way to live. But, in my household, we have gone sky diving and mountain climbing.
Our course was altered by a cancer diagnosis. We鈥檝e lived life compressed because we know it is finite. We鈥檝e lived life intentionally because we know it is not to be wasted. We鈥檝e lived life large because we know the time is short.
We have examined each day, and the examination has made each of those days well worth living.