Even cancer has been, in many ways, a blessing | Whale’s Tales

On Saturday, my right foot struck a stray rock on a sidewalk, and I went down, though without injury.

Nothing unusual in this sort of tumble. My balance has been steadily worsening since I rounded 59 years with cancer. And cancer “begat” the chemotherapy and treatments that have lit up my medicine cabinet with dozens of brightly colored pills and made falling an ever present possibility.

But when I dropped last Friday, chemo, age, maybe both, begat something I hadn’t anticipated — failing strength in my legs. I could not get up. To stand again, I had to execute a new maneuver.

This was just the latest problem to endure and adjust to in the sum of all the temporal snapshots extending forward from cradle to grave that make up a life.

In his poem “Dialogue of Self and Soul,” the Irish poet W.B. Yeats describes the stages of a man’s life, rather grimly at first:

“…The toil of growing up;

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress

Of boyhood changing into man;

The unfinished man and his pain

Brought face to face with his own clumsiness…”

…“Or into that most fecund ditch of all,

The folly that man does

Or must suffer, if he woos

A proud woman not kindred of his soul.”

Who has not felt all of these things deeply? I have, especially that last bit about “the unfinished man brought face to face with his own clumsiness.”

Each stage has its own story to tell. And as time has moved on, I have come ever increasingly to understand that even cancer has been, in many ways, a blessing. Except, you know, that whole “it’ll kill you” part. I could do without that.

I mean, if I could have learned all that this disease has taught me without the suffering, that would have been great. But I don’t think it’s possible. In his tragedy of “Agamemnon” the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, writes as follows:

“God, whose will it is that he who learns must suffer. And in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon our heart until, in our own despair, against our will, we are made wise by the awful grace of God.”

So it seems suffering is built into the human experience of living. Yet, it’s certainly not the entire show. Because, as Yates reveals in that final backward glance in the “Dialogue of Self and Soul,” despite the pain and indignities, he’d be content to live his life over again. To follow, as he says:

“…Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!…

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

Everything we look upon is blest!”

Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.