Ring the Bell

It was exactly one year ago that I left hospital, came home, and began a phase of my life that left some tinges of mortality on all the things I do.  I possessed a stapled incision that ran fully up my stomach and was an endless source of fascination to my Sudanese kids.  I jokingly told them it was a zipper that had been placed there in case the surgeons needed to go in again and it was only a couple of days later that I learned that they had believed the entire story.  I laughed so hard the staples almost popped out on their own.I was some 30 pounds lighter and in possession of only a quarter of my stomach.  The tumor in that region had been large enough that they had to remove most of the stomach to get it out.  But all was good.Then came word that I had to start chemo treatments and continue on in a stream of tests.  I was okay with that, but what I wasn’t anticipating was just how fatigued I would get as the year wore on.  I recall sitting in endless rounds of meetings regarding the food bank, Sudan, parent-teacher sessions, various board meetings, and community development meetings, and barely keeping myself sitting upright.  It was difficult, but in no way did my condition suppress my enthusiasm for all the things I believed in.Then yesterday, on the one-year anniversary, the decision came down and I was told that the chemo was done and that I could begin the process of regaining my strength.  Jane looked at me and we hugged.  This is one of the great truths of anyone going through a cancer scare: the entire family and close friends endure it.  It’s not something suffered alone. And there is this great understanding that you might actually die in the middle of your life, not its natural end.  It’s a very sobering recognition of mortality and the fragility of the human condition. I was keenly aware that everyone was watching me – wanting to open my door, get my supper, push the wheelchair, or take a meeting for me.  I had become the centre of attention and it was supremely uncomfortable.  People were tentative at first, fearing that their words might be shaped like rocks and my own spirit merely made of glass.I sat them all down and told them I was hardly worried.  I had openly spoken of my emotions my entire life and I wasn’t about to stop because another tumor might occur.  Death had been my companion too many times in life for me to be cowed by it now.  I had a great life and I wanted to live it – perhaps even more so now.  It did the trick.  My friends became friends again, and not some kind observers holding my hand.  My wife, kids and grandchildren got right back in the groove – my grandkids even bowling me over again in our wrestling matches.Yet there was much that I discovered.  I learned that I really like what I had become, just as a human being, I mean.  I was happy to see that, despite my fragility, my goals for humanity, especially the marginalized, had propelled me through my recovery - there was work still to be done.  My faith in God was delightfully confirmed in an enlightened way, not suddenly rediscovered by some shot from the blue. It prompted me to write a book on Jesus. Those principles of human respect that I have worked on so diligently, especially in later years, carried me along in their effectiveness and inspiration.  It was almost as though my thinning body was revealing the real me hidden inside.  I was both humbled and inspired by this process of life.And my community responded to my own awakening.  I had opened up myself in the process of healing, refusing to quietly go through it in a kind of solitary confinement.  I was a community man – always had been – and my recovery would have to take place in the midst of the place I had come to respect.  My silence would not protect me, and neither would it do for those around me.  I would speak the truth of my condition and was delighted to discover that my community spoke truth to me – experiences, worries, delights, and hopes.  By being open in the years prior to the operation, it gave citizens around me the permission to tell of their own experiences.And that’s just the thing: there is something of the transformative in it.  At the cancer clinic, I watched as people in various stages of disease gathered around the coffee machine, held hands, made room for one another, and told their stories, and I suddenly realized that the secret to power in my community was not at City Hall, in a corporate boardroom, or even in a position of leadership.  It was in these dignified beings who had taken the worst news life had given them and made a community out of it.  That is the kind of power of community and citizenship no politician can replicate.  It is marvelous in its performance and transformative in its abilities.There is a tradition at the cancer centre that when someone is done chemo that they ring a bell in the waiting area.  When that happens, all those seated applaud in jubilation and respect for what has been endured and overcome.  A very kind lady named Ethel, struggling with breast cancer, asked, “Will you ring the bell, Glen – it’s your turn?”  I couldn’t do it.  The vast array of human champions watching me had displayed so much courage and dignity in comparison to me that I was humbled by the sheer humanity of their exploits.  It was enough that I had been among them and had been ennobled by their effort.   Now it’s back to my principles, my books, my ideals, friends and family.  I’m the same Glen, only better:)