Kirkepiscatoid

Nothing, I've decided, beats lameness and the ability to trivialize like the news media. The news of Sen. Edward Kennedy's malignant brain tumor set the talking heads on TV going like there was no tomorrow, already eulogizing the man before he's yet to receive one radiation or chemo treatment. But the phrase that so often pops up in these yammerfests is one that drives me nuts when we are talking about the seriously ill or dying..."He's a fighter."

I think it's harmful to set our stock in measuring the journey of a loved one's illness in terms of "whether they fought or not," or "how hard they fought." It's based on the presumption that overcoming illness is always "winnable." This presumption, in fact, has the ability to tear families asunder. We are obsessed with colored ribbons these days. There seems to be this pervasive mindset that if we only buy enough t-shirts and golf balls with pink ribbons on them, somehow Mom or Sis or Aunt Boo will not die of breast cancer. We say people have "beaten" cancer. In reality we have only postponed our inevitable deaths. In all of us, "The grass withers, the flower fades," eventually, to borrow from Isaiah 40:8.

I recall in my own family when "fighting cancer" became a family fight. When my grandmother was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer, she decided to undergo palliative treatment rather than potentially curative treatment. She was 83 years old, and the chemo was a fairly brutal chemo regimen. In her frail health, the treatment was not an attractive option and could actually reduce her overall quality of life. Small cell lung cancer is associated with a worse prognosis overall than other types of lung cancer, across the board. Palliative radiation seemed to be a better option in terms of quality time in an otherwise dismal diagnosis. She chose palliation over a remote shot at "cure."

My mom, a breast cancer survivor, was horribly upset that "Mom doesn't want to fight her cancer." I was upset with her for upsetting Granny. I remember one heated interchange where I finally blurted out, "Mom, over 90% of people with this are dead in two years. Half of them are dead in one year. Barring a miracle, it ain't gonna happen, and if a miracle DOES happen, whether she fights it or not ain't got shit to do with it!"

So many times, the issue of someone "fighting" or being a fighter seems to have more to do with the survivors than it does the sufferer. For that matter, it also seems to obscure the fact that other people have chronic and serious illnesses that are just as devastating as cancer, and their sufferers are as much "fighters" as anyone else, but there are no ribbons or rallies for chronic renal disease, emphysema, or just plain "getting old and feeble."

So many people walk through the shadow of death daily, dancing between the life they used to have and the life they now have. Each is an individual footprint of the strength of the human condition, and deserves dignity. Somewhere along the road in each, the fight is to "accept the reality of death." I am reminded of this collect in the BCP:

This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring

forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I

am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still,

help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it

patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.

Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit

of Jesus. Amen.