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People
Tell Their Stories: Answering Robin’s Call to
Grace: The paradox of serving the dying Treina Aronson The women in my family assembled around the invalid, the
sick, the dying, with militaristic precision. A cry for help was their signal
to duty- the bugle that played early morning revelry. There was no formal
training for this type of service; no boot camp did they attend. They must have
watched their mothers and aunts just as I watched them. Central headquarters was
located in the kitchen. A woman’s “situation room” has always been in the
kitchen. A natural emergence of leadership would arise as each woman swiftly
matched her aptitude and constitution with a needed task. As a child, the adults
around me usually indulged my precocious curiosity. It was a different story
altogether when the women took active duty. When my grandmother was dying, I
was relegated to sit with the other children: forced to peak around corners,
holding my breath to get a better listen. Banished from direct participation, I
took my lessons in silence, never fully comprehending that one day I would
stand amongst the rank and file. On Tuesday, the night
before she received the diagnosis, I sat in my living room compiling a music
tape to send to her. Robin and I were born two days apart, and although we
didn’t meet again for another ten years, we roomed in the same hospital
nursery. Most often one envisions their soul mate taking the form of a romantic
partner, but Robin and I are soul mates in friendship. In the twenty-three
years we have known each other, her and I have held onto this strange
connection- telepathic in a way, yet not quite that precise. We think of each
other just when we need to. These wires
that run between us have never been spliced even though we are now separated by
a distance of 2700 miles. I left her a message the following Saturday. On
Sunday she returned my call. “You always have been in tune with me. I have news
to tell you” were the first words she said to me. The news was brain cancer and
she had been given three months to live. The signal had been sounded – it was
my turn to serve. “I’m not old enough. This
is yours and my aunts’ job, not mine.” I told my mom. Mom smiled. Robin and I
should be with the other children, snickering and eavesdropping, sneaking
outside to give passing cars the finger, delighting in our grown-up humor. How
could she be the one that is in need, the one that is dying? How could I become
a woman in uniform, assuming my position in the army of caretakers? When I
asked her what I could do for her, Robin replied, “Just be my best friend.” For
the first time I didn’t think I knew how to do this. Robin was her cheerful and
optimistic self when I spoke to her on the phone, but I could sense that this
was a guise, she was trying to protect me. She kept telling me it was going to
be okay and that she wasn’t going to die. After talking to her mom, Maria, I
got the real picture of her deteriorating health. The tumors were inoperable.
She was bedridden and not able to keep any food down. Vertigo had been never
ending for two weeks. She was seven weeks pregnant and her only choice was to
terminate the pregnancy. Brain cancer is a venomous
breed that moves with ominous speed. I felt a great sense of urgency to get
down to The days leading up to my
departure were filled with conflict, for as much as I felt the pull to be with
her, I equally dreaded this trip. The
first time I flew down to And would it even be Robin
that I would see? I know the healthy, vibrant Robin; the woman so full of life,
the woman with a devilish humor, who has never abandoned her sense of childish
joy and inquisitiveness. When we are together we’re eleven years old again. We
are the girls who phoned up strangers to sing off-key John Lennon songs with a
two-stringed guitar, to express to the world our sorrow over his death. We are
the girls who mooned the overcrowded public swimming pool, pretended to be
mentally retarded in the K-Mart just to embarrass our mothers when we shouted
“You don’t love us mamma ‘cause we’re different!”, and the girls who tried, but
failed miserably to bring “New Wave” to our small town, telling our Fifth-grade
teacher we were to be referred to as “Punk Robin” and “Punk Treina” during roll
call. We are the members of the two-person club we named SS, branding our
emblem with sidewalk chalk like modern-day female Zorros. (There was no Nazi
affiliation with this acronym, but I can’t tell you what it stands for because
it’s still top secret.) This is the Robin I know. I don’t know the Robin dying
from brain cancer. I envisioned my friend already gone and asked myself how I
was going to relate to this stranger. I
was afraid to see her. As the days passed, I
repeated to myself, “She is still Robin. Don’t be afraid, you know her.” This
mantra helped calm my nerves, but I still remained uncertain of my ability to
help her. I questioned if my visit would be more of an intrusion than the
benefit I wished it to be. The troops of my female predecessors effortlessly
swarmed in and took action, knowing exactly what needed to be done to aid the
ailing soul. They would clean, cook, sit by the bedside, make every needed
arrangement, shout out orders to the men to pick up this and deliver that. They
did this with grace. They did it as if they were born to do it. Maybe I didn’t
have this gene? Maybe this part of my femaleness skipped a generation? And how
was I going to act “grown-up” with the friend I still saw as eleven years old? I began to think that this
trip was going to be more for me than her. It would be a mission to gain
resolve over her impending death. I daydreamed about the tear-filled talks we
would have while walking down memory lane. She would tell me her fear of death
and how much she was going to miss me. I, in turn, would express my love for
her and my feelings of loss. I would ask her what her plans were for Jasper,
her four-year old son. I would tell her how important it was for me to remain
in his life so I could pass down her legacy to him, for it is I that knows her
in a way like no other. She was sitting on her
sun-filled porch with her mom, husband and a friend by her side when I pulled
up in the rental car. From the car, I waved to her and from the look on her
face I could tell she had no idea who she was waiving to. She recognized me as
I approached the porch and was taken by complete surprise. This was much
different from my dramatic fantasy arrival where I would drop to my knees and
sob at her bedside. I never anticipated that she would be out of her bed and
she looked much healthier than I had expected. For a moment, I thought she
wasn’t that sick. Maybe she was on the road to recovery after the termination
of her pregnancy. She had been feeling better; able to get up for short periods
of time and although she had no real appetite, she was able to hold food down.
I was comforted in this vision. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as I
thought. Maria was glad I was there
because she could now go back to work. Robin’s husband, Dan, showed me how to
“juice” while he was away at work. Always the skeptic of Western medicine,
Robin was combating her illness the natural way. She had refused radiation
treatment and instead was trying to purify herself through diet. The backbone
of this diet was ten glasses daily of freshly made vegetable and fruit juice. I
soon learned the routine: two greens, one carrot, two greens, one carrot, two
greens, one carrot, and one apple alternating with one orange. Dan told me that
juicing was like having a second job and I soon came to understand that this
was no exaggeration. It is a laborious task. Our conversation flowed as
naturally as it always had. Robin wished we could go see a movie together and
for a moment I thought that maybe we could. She told me how she had spent the
last several days thinking about our childhood. She thought about the pure joy
that we experienced and how special that time was. I agreed. I didn’t hear her
and Jasper wake up the morning after my arrival. When I finally awoke, I went
into the kitchen and found her holding herself up by one arm against the
kitchen chair, the other arm flipping a piece of French toast she was making
for Jasper. “Robin, what the hell are you doing?” I asked. She placed the
French toast on the plate in front of her anxiously awaiting son, sat down, and
said “You’re right I can’t do this. I thought I could.” For the rest of the day,
Robin continued to do that which she couldn’t. It was Sunday and everyone and
their dog came over to visit her. The door was revolving with visitors coming
in and out. One couple from across the street brought their three young
children who climbed all over Robin as she lay in bed. The visitors would ask
me how she was doing when I met them at the door. I would reply, “She’s tired,
there’s been a lot of activity, she probably should rest.” This fell on deaf
ears as the visitors would then proceed to perch themselves at the end of her
sick bed and chat away. Everyone had advice to give her; everyone knew a friend
or a cousin, or a friend of a friend of a cousin, who successfully battled
cancer. They brought her articles, they
told her books she should read, one brought in relics from a saint who had
performed miracles. With each visitor, Robin propped herself up in bed and
listened with patience and a smile. She focused on their face as they spoke
even though it was less painful to have her eyes closed and despite the fact
that focusing on one spot for too long could produce a seizure. Robin was doing
everything she could do to maintain- to appear to be healthier than she really
was. This was in part to protect others and in part due to Robin’s fiercely
stubborn nature. To acknowledge the disease was to waive the white flag – for
Robin, acknowledgement would signal defeat and this was a battle she intended
to win. The next day I posted a “Please
do not disturb” sign on her front door.
As I spent more time with
Robin I learned how to balance her need for autonomy, self-preservation and her
overwhelming desire to live with her need for support. After asking her several
times if she needed to take my arm to steady her walk and her refusal each
time, I finally said, “Okay Robin, I’ll just walk behind you and be ready to
pick your ass off of the floor if you fall.” With this smart-ass remark, she
laughed and said, “Okay.” This became the theme of my visit – I walked behind
my friend, readying myself to help her when she asked. I checked my need for
mourning at the door, understanding that I could do this with my other friends
and family but not her. And knowing that I could not predict nor control how or
when she needed my help. She was the conductor of her life. She got better at asking
for my help. In the beginning she would apologize for asking me to do things
for her. I finally told her to stop apologizing because I knew what I was
getting into when I got on the plane. She stopped. However, I had to trick her when it came to
helping her financially. Taking her to her appointment to receive her first
colonic, she asked me if her mom had given me money. I told her no she hadn’t
but that I could pay for it. She refused to accept my money. I told her not to worry
that my boyfriend had given it to me. This made her feel like she wasn’t making
me sacrifice the money to pay my own bills, but she was accepting “free” money.
Each time I paid for something else I told her that it was Eric’s money. Upon my arrival I found
Robin’s kitchen to be an absolute disaster. At first I felt a little timid
about going into someone else’s house and deep cleaning. I feared that my
ferocious cleaning would look like an insult. Dan walked in the first day while
I was washing down the wall behind the sink. A little startled, I said, “I hope
you don’t mind that I am cleaning.” He said, “Oh god no!” It took me three days
to get the kitchen back in shape. When I was done Robin told me how good it
felt to have her house back in order. She told me how frustrating it was not to
be able to do all of the things she had taken for granted and even resented,
like housework. I spent my days cleaning,
cooking, running errands, caring for Jasper and in between sitting with Robin.
Sometimes we would talk, sometimes she would sleep and while I sat by her
studying. I had told her when I first got there that I had a lot of homework
that I brought with me so if she needed to sleep she needn’t worry about my
boredom. She liked this idea. When her friend stopped by and asked what I was
reading, Robin said, “Oh, we have an arrangement. She studies while I sleep.” On my last day there I
felt anxious and full of nervous energy. I had a headache and I found it hard
to spend time with Robin. Instead I found chores to do. For the first time she
had to ask me to stop and sit with her. I had always felt apprehensive on the
day before I was due to fly back home. Being with Robin has always made me feel
so peaceful so at one with my soul, it always felt like it was the place I was
suppose to be. This time it was worse – worse because I knew that it would
probably be the last time I would ever feel this way. We stayed up later than
usual the night before I left. Dan was preparing Robin’s shower and I stood by
her as she clutched the doorframe, hanging on tight as she had a seizure. “God
damn it” she said “I gotta live or else I’m going to die!” I said “Yep, Robin
that is the alternative.” I made her laugh. After the lights were turned out, I
lay on the couch, and heard Robin loudly complain to Dan about the pressure she
was feeling in her head. She said she couldn’t take it. I felt the pull of
wanting desperately to stay to help my friend and desperately wanting to get
the hell away from hearing her in so much pain. For the first time since my
arrival the tears flowed, and I cried myself to sleep. My flight was at eight
o’clock in the morning. I left the house at six-thirty. Dan was getting ready
for work and I walked into the kitchen to give him a hug goodbye. Choking back
my tears I told him how I wished that I could stay. He said that he understood.
He said he would call if anything happened, or if anything didn’t. Robin was still in bed with
Jasper beside her. I said “Goodbye Booga, Booga” my pet name for Jasper. The
night before Robin had instructed that I come to the left side of her bed in
the morning to say goodbye, since it was now too difficult for her to turn her
head to the right. I did as instructed and stood by her bedside. It was dark
and I was glad that it was because I didn’t want her to see my tears. I told
her that I loved her. I touched her arm and felt her frailty. I sat on the plane and was
overcome by a sense of connection; a connection to Robin and a connection with
my femininity. I had never felt so proud to be a woman. I had become one of
them. I was able to serve and to serve with grace. This whole experience had
been filled with paradox, and the conclusion was no exception. My rise was
facilitated by my friend’s fall. It is my job to see the beauty in this
experience – to see the beauty of love and of friendship. But I am left with a
survivor’s guilt. Why her? Why not me? How can I feel so alive, when she is dying? Treina Aronson, M.A. is a
practicing therapist in
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