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I wanted to get away, but common courtesy and rules of workplace decorum dictated that it would be rude. I wanted to go up to my first floor classroom leaving her talking to stupid self on that landing. I have been here before. Not feeling met in my grief, in my anguish.
Just a half hour before my mother implored me to focus on the 3% survival rate that my friend’s disease has over five years as opposed the morbid 97% kill rate that stage four colon cancer can claim. Damn the Internet and the statistics you can find.
I try to ponder compassionately about the woman six stairs below me. Perhaps someone she loved died suddenly leaving her without closure and so she is spewing at me what she wished to have had. I sublimate, trying to neutralize my bile with an aphorism about listening for the heartfelt intentions of communication — I mean, she meant well and I’m in a hard place, oughtn’t I be able to take what I like and leave the rest? Instead, I wonder how it would sound, the sound of her fat, flesh covered skeleton falling down the stairwell, limbs thrashing, momentum gaining. Crack, shriek, thud, oof.
I come back into my own body and notice that tears have welled up in my eyes. I notice that involuntarily I have ascended the next stair up and away from her saccharine, non-comfort. Then I pause. Although I want to, I can’t seem to just walk away.
My friend is fighting a battle with death itself and she tells me that there is a silver lining in it — that it is a blessing.
“It hardly seems equitable,” I say, still facing away from her, putting my hands out to simulate balance scales.
“Oh, it’s not fair,” I hear from behind me and then, “but it’s still a blessing.”
“Have a good day,” I say as I continue up the stairs to my classroom where know I will feel safe enough to cry.
#wisdom_biscuit:
Don’t make people put away their negative emotions to comfort you.
Make a space for them.
Read more about this concept of “comfort in, dump out” from a 2013 LA Times article. It’s worth the read.
Here is a picture of Michael and me at Magic Camp two years in to his cage-match with colon cancer.
He passed September 26, 2019
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