Text Me Not This

"Not good news. The cancer has spread to about 8 areas and very fast. So I will go home tomorrow and wait it out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Jan. 12, 2010 @ 2:53PM Central Time

There are those instant text messages that one should never read off the cuff. THIS would be one of those. Text seems to lack the necessary mode of emotional import inherent in a phone call or even in a handwritten letter. While emoticons and generous use of punctuation, LOL's, LMAO's, and the entire parade of abbreviated sayings are intended to ensure the reader correctly interprets the tone of the message, they are all decidedly one-dimensional. Text messages lack the depth of description one might read in a newspaper story or magazine article. They are, by their very nature -- text messages -- brief, to the point, an instant communication without too much thought behind it.

Receiving that text, actually more like discovering that text a bit after receiving it, left me with the equivalent feeling that I had just banged my head against the sharp edge of an open cabinet door, or inadvertently crunched down on a piece of ice with an old metal filling, or took a fast breaking baseball pitch to the groin area (still hurts like a mamba! even if one does not possess all the male hardware). Yes, it felt like all of those horrible sensations in an instant but without the accompanying memory of having experienced those actions to elicit the pain. THAT is the lapse in texting: feeling disconnected even while connected.

Bad news by telephone is plenty bad. In the past decade, I've accepted more than what is anyone's fair share of bad news by phone. Hearing the voice on the other end relaying the heartbreak and horror of death and illness and madness is most unpleasant. And, it feels very real. When the sharp pain hits your chest, you know how it got there. When the air whooshes out of your lungs in a sudden deflating exhale of shock, you understand what caused it. When your teeth sing a song of grinding, you remember why they buzz in your head. Though the person on the other line may disconnect, the voice, the reason for the call, is fully-fleshed in your auditory senses. A phone call has the power to dim a sunset and drain the blood from a face: a phone call is wholly connected.

Right now, however, the reason for this vein of thought escapes me. What I feel is numb at more painful news from a person I allowed to take up space in my heart. As with each of us, that closeness allows a strong reaction to someone else's suffering to grab purchase within the cliffs of my inner landscape and make for the summit instead of remaining in the foothills where general bad news camps, inflicting smaller sorrows of compassion and commiseration that are devoid of truly personal connection. Though I grieve and fear for the impoverished island nation of Haiti and its peoples while they struggle to recover from a massive earthquake, I share no emotional ties with any one person, much less the country's population at large. But, to imagine a person with whom I have broken bread -- not to mention cheesecake and bottles of fine wine -- in a most helpless position is deeply lamentable. And, there is nothing, not one element outside of prayer and a shoulder, that is under my control. I can't even share the burden of his pain with him to spread it out a bit.

No, instead, there's one more person I must put before the throne of God in humility as I beseech Him for His grace and answers to prayer in the manner that He deems most appropriate to His purposes with yet another friend and family member.

Yesterday, I was prepared to comfort and care for a friend who was all set to lose his right lung to a third wave of cancer in order that he might live longer in this earthly plane. This was the worst case scenario. The possibility of death was a presence in the dark corner but not one invited to come out and play. Today, I am prepared to comfort and care for a friend who knows that outside of a miracle, he is now living each day with the knowledge that his death has stepped out into the spotlight and wishes to engage him fully.

I'm up to 30 push-ups at a time in my 120 every-other-day series. Let me at him! I can at least arm wrestle the cretin called cancer!