I recently found out that I have to have an ovary removed, but why not remove the other one too? I had breast cancer and it turns out there’s a connection between breast and ovarian cancer. No ovaries, no risk of cancer. No ovaries! It has felt like a death sentence ever since my oncologist first mentioned it. The idea of taking something in my body and removing it, makes me feel like I'm dying. I imagine my ovaries in some red plastic pan, casually dumped into one of those containers that has printed on it “Bio-Medical Waste”. The cyst on the ovary isn’t big, but it can also cause cancer. Maybe it’s time.
At least it’s time to think about the opportunity of death. Tonight as I was leaving work the wind made a sad sound through the dried stems of dead leaves still clinging to the vine on the parking structure. I thought I heard the sound of death, and I said to myself without hesitation, “It is a song I have heard all my life.” I’ve had a lot of hardships. More than anyone I know. When you lose something in life it often feels like a death. Or when we face something new, there is that feeling of “I’m going to die!” But we make it. We make it when we come to school for the first time and have no friends, when we fall in love and the person doesn’t love us back, or the love ends. Endings are a death.
Death is something that is unknown. Even when it’s good, like when a horrible boss dies and your new boss is great. It’s still an unknown. There’s still grief and fear, “How did that happen?” “Why?”… It’s really that way with life too, we just see the good as an opportunity and the bad as, death, unlucky, cursed… Death can be an opportunity too. A time to re-evaluate what matters. Also a time to let ourselves be completely vulunerable and get comfortable with that.
A friend noted on facebook awhile ago that he felt so good when a stranger helped him, even more so than when friends had helped him. I tend to think that’s the magic in life – that’s one true example of how we are all connected. It's a testimate to another unknown - how life works.
If I feel like there’s a loss happening in my life from losing my ovaries (I say "losing" like I had them in my Hello Kitty purse and I mistakenly left it in the woods while I was brushing snow from the face of my doll). The fact is, I don’t know what’s on the other side of not having ovaries. I don’t know what’s on the other side of losing my father, or what I was going to do when my best friend carelessly forgot to care about me recently. What I do know is that of all the horrible, and I mean absolutely horrible things that have happened to me, I have gotten through. I am changed though, and I’m changed in a way I had no idea of would be changed. It’s all a death, but it’s also a growth. The more I think about it, I’m not sure which one it is more: death or growth.
When I look at life like this, I feel like a grownup: someone who can manage complex issues. But I think I’m more of an evolved person, who has decided that my attitude makes a bigger difference in life, and this attitude is up to me to create. I also see a spiritual side in all this: Being in a place of not knowing creates a lot of fear in us. Now, if I can be in that place and not be afraid, I would find a power within myself few really know.
In her book, “The Places that Scare You”, Pema Chodron describes the teaching of fearlessness in this way, “To the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, to that extent we dissolve our fear. The synonym for total fearlessness is full enlightenment – wholehearted, open-minded interaction with our world… By learning to relax with groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no fear.”
If I can relax with the groundlessness of my decision, of “why me” of “why now” and the feelings of loss, then I can evolve, to the other side of fear. Like tonight, when death once again sang its song... a sad song blowing through the dried stems of dead leaves on a vine circling the parking structure. I follow the music and I take the hand of uncertainty. On the other side I will find some peace, maybe others like me, and soon things will seem familiar. So familiar that I will cling to it all again, if only for a very short time, before I hear that song that reminds me, it’s time to let go.
