TheBanyanTree: A Life Lived Online

[Linda DeMerle]

What a great story!  

I have also noticed how, when things go south, people tend to pull together.  Compassion, I think it may be called, or something like that.

People told my mother to imagine white light surrounding her and her cancerous lungs and she could will it to go away.  Three weeks later, she was dead, so it either backfired or just plain didn't work.

I don't like to tell people I am praying, usually, because I know how lame it sounds to people who don't believe.  So, while it may mean something to the sayer, I don't see how it comforts the one needing comforting, but I do say it when I can't come up with anything  more eloquent, because I do think of people and their sorrows, although my views on prayer may differ wildly from some schools which guarantee that if one asks God to do something, it is automatically fixed.  If that were true, nothing terribly awful would happen to us.  Mostly, I meditate on being able to accept things which happen and that certain people will open their minds and grow. When it comes right down to it, I think the truth is that I don't expect prayer to work until what others are praying for happens, and then I am not only surprised, but a little ashamed.  But, heck, I don't have a crystal ball, as doctors love to say.

Anyway, distress begs for consolation.  You're really very good at that.

xox
L


On Dec 3, 2013, at 1:17 PM, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not mine, of course, though it may seem like it.
> 
> I'm on this list. Not this list, another list. I've been on there for years
> -- it's for people in my profession -- bookkeepers, accountants, CPA's,
> EA's, etc. I've been on there for so long that after my surgery in the
> distant past a group from the list sent me flowers. Some of us have met,
> some of us are friends, some of us are friends but haven't met yet.
> 
> There's a guy on the list. There's always a guy. He shares everything
> that's going on with his life, and many people find him insufferable not
> from the sharing, but because he's often a key troublemaker when political
> discussions go awry. There aren't supposed to be any political discussions,
> but they pop up now and then. He's annoying enough with his pronouncements
> that I've considered switching sides merely because I don't like being on
> his side.
> 
> But that's a pretty weak excuse for switching my political persuasion, so I
> haven't. But this guy . . . he was a history major in college, so he's
> certain he knows everything and those who disagree with him are
> fearmongerers (?) and not paying attention. And when it's pointed out to
> him that he's often the problem, he doesn't get it, his level of
> comprehension often being not as much as is required.
> 
> A couple of years ago he shared that he had a girlfriend, Shannon, and that
> they were going to get married.
> 
> He kept us apprised of their march toward the altar. Many wished him well.
> 
> He keeps us notified of scifi marathons and classic radio shows. He talks
> about how well done some tv shows are, like the Walking Dead (which I've
> never seen, despite my love of zombies).
> 
> He told us of a car accident he was in where the other driver, who had
> caused the accident, was killed. That shook him up.
> 
> He told us when he married Shannon.
> 
> Then Shannon got pregnant! While some of us may have thought, "poor kid,"
> we congratulated him.
> 
> He talked of his wife often, and her pregnancy.
> 
> He emailed me once and asked if my book would offend his wife. She's a
> psychiatric nurse and he thought I might be in the business of bashing
> people in the industry. He's oblivious to what goes on around him in the
> wider world. I told him I didn't know if it would offend her, or if she'd
> like it, that I really couldn't tell him. So he didn't buy the book, and no
> big deal to me. It was just a strange question, I thought.
> 
> Shannon got transferred to a remote location, as if West Virginia itself
> weren't remote enough. Now they were moving to a remoter place.
> 
> He wrote about his struggle with his business, how he didn't know how to go
> remote with his clients, and he kept asking the same marketing questions
> year after year until some people threw up their hands in impatience.
> 
> The baby was born, and he often talked of taking care for her while he was
> working.
> 
> The baby's not yet a year old.
> 
> And Shannon, a lifelong nonsmoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and they
> couldn't fix it, they could only slow it down.
> 
> And this guy is faced with losing his wife and having a small baby who
> won't remember much of her mother.
> 
> The other day she went to the hospital to have her lungs drained, and they
> found more cancer they hadn't known about.
> 
> They're getting a second opinion.
> 
> Meanwhile, people send emails telling him they can beat it if they will
> just think positively.
> 
> We're a stubborn people, us humans. That's probably a good thing, but if I
> ever get cancer, which is likely with my family history, and people tell me
> that I can just think it away, I'm likely to virtually smack them upside
> the head.
> 
> I've never smacked anyone anywhere except in self-defense, so that's really
> not likely. I'm more talk than bite.
> 
> I can't add to the chorus of "We're praying for you!" because I don't do
> that, but I can hope her cancer goes into spontaneous remission and then
> goes away by magic. I hope the same for another friend on the east coast
> who also has a terminal lung cancer. And another friend's daughter on that
> same list, who has been fighting cancer for six years. It just keeps
> getting worse and they've removed much of her. She has three children, two
> of them not much older than the cancer. They're all young, all these women.
> 
> We're no longer bound by geography, by a closeness in knowing people
> face-to-face. We live in a world where Don's sadness can be shared with a
> group of people all over the US and Canada, some of whom don't care for
> him, but when someone's faced with the horrible things that happen in life
> that doesn't matter so much. We're all of us united against the common
> enemy. We hope for the best for those we know, even if they've annoyed us
> in the past. We can transcend social constructs and meaningless barriers if
> we just listen.
> 
> M