The C Word....

Last week on a Sunday, my mom called to tell me my aunt’s been diagnosed with first stage of colon cancer. As if losing her son 7 months ago in a horrific car accident was not enough. Thankfully it is early enough that she has all options available and given her age, hee prognosis looks better than most. But I’ve found myself in the middle of a world I thought I’d long forgotten when my grandmother passed away from colon cancer over 10 years ago but here we are. cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, not necessarily in that order. Feeling helpless I asked how I can help because it’s easy to be there with the monetary things if necessary; it’s hard to be there in other ways. After agonizing on what I should say to my aunt when I first talked to her; I realized that I would have to throw caution out the window and talk to her about metaphysics.

Culturally speaking; most ethiopians are just not open to this kind of stuff - they want the practicals and then move on to the religous “why is God punishing me and doing this TO me”?. Having seen her go through so many changes in the past 7 months over my cousins death which hasn’t been easy; and I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to lose a son - I realized letting go is so hard and difficult. And all her beliefs in her thoughts and built up goo of fear and anxiety in the walls of her reality as a result of this indigestable thinking has shown up in the form of the c word. I told her that she is going to be fine and after all this is over she will have too many other things to look forward to so that cancer will be such a small part of her daytime musings. Times like this show you how important family is, chosen or genetic. It also shows you how immediately your life can be put into a tailspin or on a temporary hold, depending on how you look at it. For my aunt, time seems suspended in the air right now..... and it will probably seem like the longest months are ahead of her with surgery, recovery, treatment, etc...There are some good things happening though, too. Many blessings coming down the road when she is cancer free. But I couldn’t help but think about whether it’s our natural human instinct that make us wait until we’re in a reactive state to be reflective about what we should and shouldn’t be doing in our life (whether it’s breaking out of bad habits, changing our life situation, health, wealth, etc...) and how can one come to the conclusion that problems created by thought cannot be solved by thought.