It's about time

Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ contains the memorable line “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.”  You might imagine that the image would appeal to a near-obsessive amateur distance runner such as myself, but instead it exhausts me. It suggests that the authentic life has meaning from being filled with activity and intensity. I’m reminded of the prevalence of the ‘bucket list’, and titles such as “1000 places to see before you die” – the questionable assumption that I will improve my life if I pack in as many experiences as possible. Yet the quote does still resonate with my experiences of grief over the past six years.

After Jen’s diagnosis in September 2008, we strove to make the best use of whatever time was given to the four of us, in between the physical and emotional impacts of the cancer and its treatment. Mostly we tried to be together as much as we could, within the constraints of my work, to take opportunities to get away within the gaps of the chemo cycle and to avoid wasting energy on the small irritants of life. I’m thankful now for the emotional quality of that time together.

In the aftermath of Jen’s death, there was an overwhelming sense of the fragility of life, of each new day being precious in itself. I promised myself that I wouldn’t take time for granted, especially time with my children.  I continue to value that realization even as I slide back into the complacency of routine, for the truth is that people we care about can die suddenly and unexpectedly. But one of the lasting distortions of that grief was an impatience with time, a desire to accelerate the future rather than let it happen, and this sometimes led me into poor decisions, especially in relationships.

The film ‘About time’ concerns a family where the males have the ability to travel  in time back to their past. It begins as a romantic comedy, in which Tim, the lead male character, uses this ability to correct the most embarrassing failures of his romantic encounters. Eventually it becomes clear that Tim’s father (played by Bill Nighy), knowing that he later develops cancer, has chosen to go back in time and retire in his fifties, so as to be able to spend more time with his two children. Towards the end we see Tim using his temporal ability to re-experience each day, but live it better, to care more for people and savour the beauty of events. His final resolution is not to travel at all in time, but to live that way the first time around. 

My first response after the end of the film was to feel again that desire for intensity, to fill the unforgiving minute, to live as though tomorrow might not come. However living intentionally does not have to mean living with continual intensity.  There’s  a danger in snatching at opportunities, rather than allowing time for things to develop. Succinctly, the message is: relax and appreciate. More deeply, as a Christian I don’t have to grasp at every chance, for there’s more than this life to consider, and nothing that’s good will ultimately be lost.  To quote Emily Dickinson “This world is not conclusion, another stands beyond, invisible as music but positive as sound”.

Miss you

Dear Jen,
                I used to nurture a small hope that you might have left one last message for me, to arrive or be found after your death. The other day, I was in the process of changing phones (taking over Primus's phone now that he's upgraded) and discovered a text message from you stored on the SIM card, one that I thought I'd deleted. It was sent in October 2007 (about three phones ago), while you were away with the boys and I was at home. It ended 'Miss you' - you normally ended phone calls with 'Love you'.
                In the immediate aftermath of your death, your absence was burning so strongly in every moment that it felt like a presence. In those depths of grief, I was missing what you did for us - your role in our lives - just as strongly as I missed you yourself. Back then I compared it to losing a leg - not fatal but disabling - so that every time I tried to take a step, and wondered why I couldn't, I thought of you.
               Now after four years, the gap left by your absence has long been filled in some way, even if inadequately. Our lives run on week after week, and we've found a substitute for every practical contribution that you once made. Thanks to the loyalty of great friends, I'm not as isolated as I feared I might be, even if I still don't have the depth and intimacy and continuity of relationship that I had in you.
              Indeed, your absence has long become routine. Your place at the table, or on the other side of the bed, is still empty, but that's now normal. The void in our lives has closed up. Being a single parent is tough but not disastrous, and the boys are (mostly) OK. I've adapted to the 'disability'. Of course I notice your absence every time I wake up, every time I look in the boys' faces, every day when I come home, every night when I go to sleep. But in that practical sense I no longer miss you, and indeed it would be a strange readjustment if you miraculously appeared again now.
               Instead I am left with the absence of you yourself in all your particularity - your voice, gesture, touch and walk, your visions, passions, obsessions and insecurities, your faith, love, loyalty and forgiveness - all that can never be replaced, that is gone forever in this world, that exists now in the memories of those who knew you. More now I find some exact details hard to bring into mind, but when I watch the videos we have, there's a physical shock of recognition. I may well stay single, but even if I find another long-term relationship as good as I had with you, you will never be replaced as a person. In that deeper way, I will always miss you.I hope that's what you wanted.

                  Love,
                              Maritus

Thanks but no thanks

A few months ago I read an article written Christian suffering from metastatic cancer (who has since died), entitled "Thank God for the gift of cancer". There are certainly helpful and honest reflections in the article about facing death, but I had a strong reaction to the title, and the subsequent development of that idea:

Why has God given me cancer? Maybe it is to make me repent of my wrongs and turn to Jesus - it has certainly done this. Maybe it is to make me talk more to my friends and family about Jesus - it has certainly done this. Maybe it is for reasons way beyond my understanding – it is certainly at least this. All I know is that God has given me this gift of cancer to use for his glory.

And later

So I thank God for this gift of cancer because he is good and he is using it for his purposes. The plans of the Lord are perfect even if I don’t know the reasons for everything.

I don’t see bible writers as celebrating suffering and thanking God for that gift, even if this is revealed as the direct purpose of God – the invading armies destroying Jerusalem, or Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’, or Jesus’ death on the cross. Paul comes closest by boasting in his weaknesses, but I don’t think he’s thanking God for the ailment itself, only for the fact that God’s power it clearly seen. Jesus asks the Father to ‘take this cup away’. The prophet Hosea struggles with the concept that the Assyrian army is part of God’s purpose. 

In fact it’s clear on further reading that the writer doesn’t see anything special about cancer. They are thankful because in their view there is an individual and specific purpose in their suffering, which is part of God’s ultimate design for them. Another version of this approach can be seen in sections of John Piper’s well-known piece "Don't Waste Your Cancer".

You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design.

There may be good events in our lives that follow on from the suffering, and it might be tempting to see the suffering as the cause of the good. Then we could say that God’s design was to allow that suffering in order to cause that good. But to me that reasoning is suspect. Many bad consequences follow on from that suffering – is that God’s design as well? Is God so constrained that he cannot do good without inflicting suffering? Are we in fact right when we perceive the good outcome to be caused by the suffering, when it might have happened anyway through another means?  

Obviously this is personal for me. It’s easy to be theoretical about suffering when it isn’t affecting you.  The day of Jen’s death was an unequivocally bad day. Whenever I read people say that cancer is a gift from God, I remember that day, and I’m sure they are wrong. The three of us are right at the epicentre of this particular disaster, and I see many continuing negative outcomes from Jen’s death for us, for Jen’s wider family, and beyond – grief, anger, sadness, loneliness, discouragement. We have lost something that we will never get back; we are wounded in a way that will never fully heal. There are positive realisations too – changes in my perspective on life and death, greater understanding of the grief of others – but they seem small in comparison to the losses. They are ‘flecks of gold in the ash heap’. I’d give them all up in an instant to have Jen back. 

The question of God’s relationship to suffering is deep and ancient, and there’s no way in a short blog post to address all the issues, or work through all the bible passages. All I can do is summarise some of my thoughts. There’s a strong body of Christian thought that sees God’s design as extending to every detail – by implication to every molecule and every cell division, and hence to cancer, among many other forms of suffering. This position must then engage with the meaning of free will and individual responsibility, and of course the key question of whether the goodness of God is compromised by making him responsible for evil as well. Various expositors (e.g. see Don Carson’s book “Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspective in Tension”) have made the point that in the Bible there’s an asymmetry between God’s responsibility for good and for evil. God is seen as more directly involved in good actions, whereas evil is most typically seen as involving secondary causes (while still remaining within God’s overall sovereignty). Thus even in a case where there is clear purpose of God revealed (the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians), it is still through secondary causes. So even in the ‘total sovereignty’ view, we should avoid thanking God for bad events, and avoid trying to find justifications for why God has done it unless they are explicitly revealed.

I think there’s also a tenable biblical position that God’s sovereignty does not need to extend to every microscopic detail, while still being powerful enough to keep all of his promises. This removes to some extent God’s direct responsibility for the cell divisions of cancer in a specific person, while still recognising that the overall design of the universe allows for us to die in many ways. To some extent it also lessens the paradoxes of free will. To use an analogy due to William James, it’s as though we are playing chess as a novice against a grandmaster. The grandmaster cannot predict our moves in advance, but always wins the game anyway. So in that analogy God cannot predetermine our choices but still achieves his purposes. The implication of this position is that we certainly shouldn’t see every event as a direct decision of God – it may just be an outcome of the kind of universe that God has created.  This has been called ‘design by wholesale’ (e.g via the general principles of how biology works) rather than ‘design by retail’ (divine choice of every outcome). 

It’s noticeable that a number of the well-known bible passages that speak of God’s care for us (e.g. Matthew 10:30 “even the hairs of your head are all numbered” or Romans 8:28 “in all things God works for the good of those who love him”) are actually reassurances to people who are already suffering - reassurances that they are not abandoned by God. The focus is not on finding reasons for suffering, but on the attitude one should have in the midst of it. The good envisaged is not some private consequence (which ends in our trying to second-guess God’s special purposes purely from observing events), but is in complete continuity with the known promises and purposes of God for us: e.g. perseverance (James), genuine faith (Peter), being united with Jesus (Romans). There are instances in bible narratives where God’s grand plans depend on using human evil to bring about very specific good outcomes (e.g. Joseph’s treatment by his brothers, or Jesus’ death on the cross), but I’m not convinced that this is the model for every instance in every person’s life. 

No matter which model we may have of God’s sovereignty, suffering is an opportunity to reshape our perspective, to renew our confidence in God’s promises. It’s better to maintain that some events are bad (dying of aggressive cancer at 40), even if they can be in some sense redeemed by God. It’s better to give thanks for the good that does happen, rather than be thankful for evil in the hope that it might lead to some identifiable good, lest we end up confusing good and evil. God doesn’t promise me or any of us a ‘happy ending’ in this life, but I can trust God that I am never abandoned (unless I choose to reject him). I don’t thank God for Jen’s pointless death from breast cancer, but I do thank him for her resilient faith right to the end – especially since that was not a guaranteed outcome either. I don’t look for some obscure consequence as evidence of a design that could justify Jen’s death, but I do look for the good that can be achieved in response to it. I don’t thank him for the pain we’ve endured, but I do thank him that our faith too is still intact, albeit battered – dare one say refined?

A New York Minute

The other day I came across the expression “a New York minute”, defined by some as the length of time between when the lights turn green and the cab behind you beeps its horn. It’s also the name of a song by the Eagles. To quote some lines:

In a New York Minute
Things can get pretty strange
In a New York Minute
Everything can change
In a New York Minute

Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody's going to jail
If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door

It’s not surprising that this song got a lot of airplay after the September 11th 2001. It also reminds me of those life-altering moments when bad news arrives. These days it usually comes by mobile – such as on September 15th 2008 when Jen rang me at work about 1pm after hearing the breast surgeon’s initial diagnosis. In the moment the world spins as you take it in and imagine the path ahead.

Of course it’s rarely just one moment – there’s the day you find the lump, or notice the pain, then the visit to the doctor, perhaps an appointment for tests, and finally another visit to get the results. Even before that the cancer cells had been multiplying without your knowledge, so the moment is just when you find out.

On a Friday in mid-December I have one of those New York minutes. I’ve just been for a 10km run at lunchtime from work, a completely normal occurrence. In the disabled bathroom (which doubles as a shower room), I go to the toilet and immediately see blood in my urine – in fact it is light pink. The world spins slightly.

It’s symptomatic of the last few years that my first thought is of prostate cancer. I would be the first to admit that I haven’t always looked on the bright side of life (or death), but the rapid course of Jen’s illness did encourage that tendency in me. Since I have lived some years now with the daily presence of grief, I know that an apparently stable life and good health can overturn in a moment. The ice is much thinner than we usually think.

As soon as I have showered and am back at my desk, I turn to Dr Google. The technical name for my symptom is hematuria and there is a whole list of possible causes – from drugs to kidney stones to urinary tract infections, but including a few cancers. That night I dig into journal papers and find some bad news. There is a 1in 4 chance of it being cancer, and most of those are bladder cancer (one of the nastier ones). In my favour are age, fitness, and being a non-smoker.

By a small miracle I manage to get a doctor’s appointment on the Saturday morning. The doctor confirms my basic assessment (e.g. not obviously due to something else such as kidney stones), and instructs me to get some tests done. The soonest I can get an ultrasound is the Tuesday, with results on the Wednesday.


It is a busy weekend, but in the background I think a lot about dying. In a small way I appreciate better now what Jen went through in those early weeks, even though I saw it from by her side. There is an immediate clarity about priorities: though others might miss me, the boys are the only ones who need me. I pray that if it is cancer it might be prostate cancer, so at least I’d have a good chance of seeing the boys into their early twenties, and I could work long enough to ensure some financial stability for them. I think about whether to write each of them a letter for their 21st birthdays, in case I’m not around. But I am reminded of my experience with Jen – it’s not the last words that really matter, but the ones that I say every day. If there’s something important to say, why not begin saying it now? I go over my plans for the boys if I die. I talk to a few friends, and to Jen’s family.

Tuesday creeps around. After the scan, there’s the unsettling realisation that the specialist knows what he’s seen, but can’t tell me directly. I start examining the body language and the nuances of expression. When I leave with the scans he wishes me ‘good luck’ – what does that mean? On Wednesday the time until the appointment crawls by. I consider again what I’ll do if it’s bad news. But it’s one of the good New York minutes: the tests show no indications of cancer in the samples or in the ultrasound. The recommendation is to see a urologist and organise to have a cystoscopy. The doctor indicates it’s possibly just a ‘runner’s hematuria’, caused by the bladder bouncing against the pelvic bones while one runs. But why is it happening now? I’ve run 10,000km in the last 8 years, almost 1000 separate runs, and it’s never occurred before.

As in all these medical dramas, the waiting goes on. The earliest I can get an appointment with the urologist is mid-January. So I have to face a month with the residual uncertainty about what might really be wrong. The hematuria recurs a week later after another run. The urologist is optimistic – if there’s anything in the wall of the bladder it’s smaller than 4mm (the resolution of the ultrasound), and should be treatable. Finally in the first week of February I have the cystoscopy under a general (as a day procedure).

Fortunately, the results are completely clear – I have some expensive photographs of the walls of my bladder to prove it, and one unpleasant day of recovery from the procedure. I should be overjoyed, but instead there’s a dull relief. The scientific and sceptical side of me says that problems that go away by themselves sometimes come back by themselves. What did I learn for living now? That first few days of reflection, easily the most difficult week of the year, convinced me that regardless of the outcome I should do a few things for the boys’ long-term future and security. The challenge is to follow through on those now the crisis has passed. I’ve been given some more days, maybe decades, as have you. I want to make the most of the time that’s been given to me. Yet having looked again into the darkness, I still see the shadows.

Keeping it in perspective

After Jen's diagnosis in September 2008, we both experienced a shift in perspective. The worries that had been there previously now seemed less important. We drove more carefully. We argued less. We put more effort into the relationships with people we loved.

So does this perspective continue now? Three and a half years later, does the experience of death still diminish the significance of everyday problems? At times I do reflect upon some personal conflict or stressful situation, and remind myself that it's non-fatal. We'll all still be alive in the morning and see the sun rise. Material achievements still seem paltry compared to the value of people. All we can do is make use of the time that's given to us.

There's a risk here of being too detached, of not worrying enough. Both Jen and I were conscious of reassuring our friends that what was happening in their lives still mattered just as much to us, even if it was less dramatic than Jen's situation. Reading Lily Brett's book of essays 'In Full View ', she describes growing up in Melbourne as the daughter of two survivors of Auschwitz. She was constantly reminded that nothing that happened to her could ever be as bad as what happened to her parents, but the outcome seemed to be that her very real problems were neglected. For me it's a sign of transition that Jen's death is far enough away that it's sometimes obscured by immediate events in the foreground, whether joy or sadness.

Mostly though I find that the distortion of grief is that it amplifies my problems rather than diminishes them. This is most obvious with the experience of other deaths. Grief does give a healthy reminder of the fragility of all life, especially our own, and the impact of death on others. Whenever I see on the news about any deaths, I think of those half a dozen or so of us who still think of Jen on most days, and who probably will for the rest of our lives. Beyond that there were two hundred or so people at Jen's funeral who were in some way affected by her death. I think for a moment of that impact for each death, multiplied by the overall toll, and am briefly overwhelmed.

I've been fortunate so far to be spared the death of any immediate family since Jen, but there have been two other funerals -- an uncle who died of cancer not long after Jen, and my father's cousin who died of a heart attack after dinner one evening just as his wife was bringing him a cup of tea. It's not just the death itself that resonates with Jen's death, but the encounter with other people's grief in all its variety. The unexpected death of our golden retriever, Sasha, at the start of 2012, also brought back many of the same feelings, especially as Sasha was so strongly linked to Jen herself.

Grief amplifies anger, often in a bewildering and subterranean way.  We can't reasonably be angry with Jen, and so it surfaces in other places. The household suffers from my lack of patience when I'm tired and under stress. My response to normal slights or annoyances can be out of proportion, as though I'm waiting to find someone to nail, to take out my anger upon. Thankfully that kind of over-reaction is diminishing, and I'm becoming better at recognising the causes.

Grief also amplifies my sense of being alone. Even when I was travelling for work, I always made a point of ringing Jen at least once a day if possible. In all of the 5800 days that we were married, there were only a bare handful where we didn't talk because of distance. The day she died was the end of that long conversation, though it still continues in my mind. So I've found myself being very sensitive to this kind of sudden loss. In circumstances where friends have sadly broken off contact, either temporarily or permanently, it feels like another death, another abandonment. I struggle still not to 'catastrophise' - the person is still alive, but just not talking to me. I wonder if this over-dramatisation is also an unconscious defense, a retreat into safe territory - who after all can challenge the validity of grief, and its ability to draw sympathy? 

There is a slow transition happening. The colours are coming back into life. For example, I've started to feel positive about my work, rather than just dragging myself through it.   I have wondered if there's a proper 'balanced' perspective I'll reach, between the one extreme of feeling that death is for old people, and the other of seeing life as constantly fragile. I suspect not.  The perspective will just shift depending on my focus, and the yet unknown events of life and death. Grief will remain, but it won't always block out the sun.

A time of gifts

In  my 2011 Christmas blog I reflected on the absence of Jen's talent in finding a thoughtful gift for me. For Christmas 2012, at a time when I was looking forward to the day less than I can ever remember, there were three gifts that stood out. One was planned long ago. In March 2009, during one of the intervals between chemo treatments, Jen came with me to Canberra for a work conference. We took the opportunity to see an exhibition of Degas art works at the NGA (with Jen in a wheelchair, due to the effects of peripheral neuropathy), and Jen insisted that I should buy a poster of one of the works as a present for myself. For this last Christmas I finally organised to frame that poster, so I can hang in up in our (my) bedroom, and thus complete the gift.

The other two gifts were unexpected presents from friends. One was a set of books and resources for learning New Testament Greek - an astoundingly well-chosen gift, as I was intending to put some time this summer into that exact area of study. The other was an intriguing book of poems inspired by music, something to transport me beyond the usual boundaries of my poetic explorations - the kind of present that Jen herself was adept at finding.

Beyond the wrapping paper, I also have a rich legacy from Jen of the 'gifts that keep on giving' - the transformations that come from being loved and sharing life together, the family we became. One of Jen's gifts that I thought I'd lost entirely was her loyalty, her fierce and magnificently one-eyed instinct to defend me if she felt I was being unappreciated or taken advantage of - what I call her 'lioness' mode. I do still sometimes imagine Jen's perspective on an event - and her anger is a reminder of the need to respect and value myself. I see that best through the eyes of someone who loves me.

Perhaps this imagined perspective is nothing more than a psychological trick, and one that could be dangerously self-justifying. But in the last year I've been humbled to realise that I have two or three friends who give me some of that same loyalty, who can be angry for me when I am still in too deep to be angry for myself. So I am reminded that some of what I have lost in Jen can be provided in friendship - differently, spread over multiple people, but still deeply valuable.

Patrick Leigh Fermour's classic memoir 'A Time of Gifts' recounts the first part of his travels across Europe on foot from Holland to Constantinople in 1933, at the age of 18. Jen and I both read it in the early 1990s. Although the title is itself a quote from a poem by Louis MacNeice, it does allude also to his memories of the kindness and generosity of complete strangers on his long journey. My experiences in the last three and a half years remind me of that book - both the daunting scale of the enterprise, but also the support of many people. Some of those are long-term friends who have stuck by me as I knew they would, others were unexpected but indispensable. I've also coming to accept that some can provide that friendship for only a section of the journey, while our paths coincide. I'm learning to be grateful for that overlap, rather than always wanting to hold on. I strive also to be a giver as well as a receiver, not to be so buried in my own grief that I do not see the struggles and disappointments and griefs of those alongside me.

Contact has been made

I’ve often said to friends that with Jen’s death I lost 90% of my adult company. The truth is worse than that, for even if I could replace that time in aggregate between my friends, nothing would come close to the depth and continuity of my conversations with Jen. She knew every important memory of my first twenty five years, and she shared the next seventeen – so many special moments of which I am now the only witness. In a typical working day I’d find time to ring her at least once and usually twice to chat about what was happening. That would continue on and off from when I arrived home, until a last precious chat in bed before going to sleep. The purpose of those conversations ranged widely – information, analysis, argument, letting off steam, reassurance, problem-solving, decision-making and so on. 

The last three years has been a slow adjustment to a new kind of single life, building up a stronger network of friendship and support.  I don’t yet find all of those dimensions of conversation now in friendship, and wonder if I ever will. But being involved in a new relationship this year briefly brought back that experience of intense contact with another person. Apart from the sheer volume of communication, there was the deeper sense of being a high priority to someone else, not only in responsiveness, but in a commitment to remember and be interested in the details of each other’s lives. A new and unsuspected world opened up, the richness of a person’s whole life, their history and memory, their fears and failures, their hopes and plans. As Ted Hughes writes in a poem about meeting Sylvia Plath (echoing John Donne) - “You were a new world. My new world. So this is America, I marvelled. Beautiful, beautiful America.”   

Then there’s the dark side. The title of the blog is the catchphrase from a second-rate 1970’s  Dr Who series  (The Invisible Enemy) – as characters are infected and controlled by the alien virus they say ‘Contact has been made’.  The very power of that experience of communion with another person can feed the craziness that lurks around relationships – whether the metaphor is illness, obsession, madness or addiction.  The meeting of that need for connection can influence us to accept poor treatment, to try to prolong doomed relationships, to ignore the concerns of our friends. In Geoffrey David Roberts’ book “Shantaram” there are two characters in what he characterizes as a “lifeboat” relationship. One person is continually sacrificing things that matter to them in order to keep the other person happy, throwing things overboard to keep the lifeboat afloat, until they lose respect for themselves. I remember when I read that passage years ago, I suddenly saw parts of my life differently. 

My briefly renewed experience of the intimacy of communication could hardly compare to my long years with Jen, but it rekindled my dissatisfaction with singleness, and made the readjustment back more problematic. For all the benefits of the single life, to me it doesn’t hold a candle to the intimacy of a good marriage – while still being much preferable to the eventual destruction wrought by a dysfunctional relationship. But to live in the present, I’ve had to rebuild the time I put into friendships.  I’ve also come back to the recognition that I am loved now by many people, and I don’t have to satisfy most of that desire for contact in one person.  

In contrast to that metaphor of madness, I’d see a more fundamental reality behind this desire for connection. Augustine writes in the opening section of the ‘Confessions’ “you have made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you”. The deepest experiences of contact, whether in marriage or singleness, are only an echo of something much greater, not exclusive as romance is, but sure and lasting – the answer to the cry of our heart.