The Soft Sound of Weariness

It has been only recently that I have really understood how profound and difficult a question, "how are you?" is. Of course we can add to that all questions in that genus, "how's your family, how's the boy, how's your wife," and of course the ever popular, "how are you... REALLY? (pause for gravitas). When that question is asked you really have one of three options 1) lie: this is a popular one institutionalized by the ubiquity of the acronym "o.k." sometimes spelled "okay". 2) dodge the question: this is done when a non-answer is given that often satisfies the interrogator such as, "we're getting along," or "we're here."3) tell the truth: this is an unpopular option which can produce discomfort and confusion on the part of both the interrogator and the one questioned. It is mainly for this reason that this latter option is avoided so often.

In the last few weeks I have found myself partaking in all of these choices... though of course I find ways of self-justifying so that option 1 isn't really a lie... more like a subterfuge form of option 2. What has compounded the already difficult answering of the question is the strangeness I feel at the fact that it is so difficult to find an answer. Andrew is fairly healed up, the family "routine" has returned, and yet still things just don't feel right. I feel as if I am watching one of those cursed Imax movies where you are flying in a glider through some forsaken ravine; the entire world is moving around you yet your inner ear is telling you that you aren't moving. I suppose it would be more the inverse; the world looks normal but my proprioception is going crazy.

Last week I had lunch with a group of area pastors from a bunch of different churches in the Staunton/Waynesboro/Augusta County area. As soon as I entered the room I felt that feeling begin to take over as the realization hit me that I hadn't seen this group of people since Before Cancer (it seems now that all of life is neatly divided up BC/AC). I dreaded the first question, yet it came still, "Rick... right? How ya been?" I felt nauseous, which is a troubling development when standing in a lunch line, and so proceeded with a brief overview: Dec 22nd... cancer, chemo, surgery, tumor gone, rejoicing YAY!!! Thankfully that offering was accepted without further probing or even attempts at some kind of affect and I could at least get my lunch and sit down at the table. I could not possibly get away with only one recounting of the last three months in this hour long lunch and, sure enough, gave one more, slightly more detailed account over my last bit of salad. I left this lunch with a feeling of exhaustion that extends beyond the post-lunch "carb-coma" which, to be frank, I haven't experienced since early November when I had the hair-brained idea of trying to lose a quarter of my body weight. I was wearied simply by having to recount the nightmare, by having to be reminded of the scars that I bear as a cancer parent.

I often find myself wondering when reality will really hit, when the weight of this past quarter will strike me. To prepare for the eventual violent arrival of reality I think I have constructed for myself a bit of a protective shell. The shell is imperfect of course but should at least take some of the brunt when the unwanted visitor arrives. As I have had to learn however, every anesthetic bears some side-effects. This one has at least two. The first is simply that it seems to dim life as if the world existed in shades of blue and grey the way it does right before the sun pops over the horizon in the morning. The second is related to the first, it traps me inside. That is the real problem, that in the hope that shock of reality with be absorbed by this shell I have submitted myself to staying incased within it. This of course leads to side-effect number one since everything that you experience has to come through the shell which conveniently filters out all sensory extremes and leaves you eating gruel and looking at fog (I could also say smelling fertilizer but I think that is simply a side-effect of living in the Valley in the spring).

Now to the real rub, when new people ask me how I've been reality strikes. Oh sure, it doesn't come in a full out assault... that would be welcome since then it would expend its energy and move one, crushing my shell but leaving me bruised at worst. Instead it gives glancing blows, minor shots that don't shatter the shell but instead chip and crack it. The cracks that come allow some light through, little teases and hints of something better, but also the terror of knowing that when reality comes I will have less to absorb its kinetic fury. The light that does come in though does give me some clarity. I am realizing that the supposed benefit of the shell isn't worth its cost; a muted life is a miserable one. I'm also seeing though that the weight of reality might not strike me like a wrecking ball at all. Instead perhaps it has simply been sitting on my shoulders, bearing down with a weight that makes every step a labor.

Perhaps then the simplest answer to the question, "how are ya?" is one word:

Tired

Tired isn't an altogether negative thing. There are certainly times in which being tired is a detriment but sometimes, as long as you feel good about your labor, being weary brings with it a satisfaction. Up until the last couple of days I think that is something that I have been missing, satisfaction with my labors. I want to feel that I have struggled well... not perfect mind you, I'm not that narcissistic... at least not today... but well. The last couple of days I feel like I have begun to come out of the shell a little bit, poking away at it from the inside and reaching my hand out through the holes. As I have begun the steps to leave the shell I have found what I was hoping for, nail-scarred hands to pull me out. My shell had kept me from experiencing life and from relationship with the One who is present in the midst of our sufferings because of His own. I suppose it is fitting then that I am coming out just in time to see Him pass by on that donkey on the way into the royal city. In a few days I will take up my palm branch and sing Hosanna, I will enter into the ambivalence of a week that commemorates rejection and betrayal, and then next week I will celebrate the Resurrection, the defeat of death and evil and sin... and cancer. I will still be tired but, Lord willing, I won't be holed up in a self-made prison thinking to avoid pain and so avoiding life. Instead I will be walking and the sound that I hear when I walk won't just be the sound of my weariness but the soft sound of sandaled feet leading me to live in the strange world in which, because of His resurrection, now contains both grief and hope, triumph and pain.