Day 62

I went to the doctor yesterday with Bill to get answers to the question of a syndrome of vague symptoms that he has been plagued with for about a month. Tests were ordered to rule out the more troubling possibilities. Neither Bill nor I flinched when the earnest young doctor used the word Cancer. We listened and nodded and did the next thing.

I followed Bill to the lab for a blood draw and sat in the waiting room reading an well-worn issue of Sunset while he had a chest x-ray. I found a couple of good recipes and thought about donating the stacks of old magazines Bill has stored in his office.

We left the clinic and went to the co-op for a late lunch. Over kale salad and sweet potato fritters, we talked about illness and death. What if? How would we care for each other? How would we cope? I remember feeling so grateful for the intimacy: an intimacy made sweeter by the reminder that the future is not a guarantee.

The phone rang while we were putting away the groceries from the co-op. It was the doctor. I handed the phone to Bill and opened the pantry door to shelve the rice noodles and the Tangerine Orange Zinger tea. I felt surprising detached as I listened to Bill's end of the conversation, although a winced just a little when I heard him ask: "Is it painful?"

He got off the phone and relayed the conversation to me, in much the same way the pretty young anchor people report the news. The results from the tests were back already. There was a cause for concern. The doctor was ordering more tests. He had to be at the hospital tomorrow at 11:45.

I remained calm and detached throughout this whole course of events. I didn't allow myself to catastrophize. Each time my mind tried to hurl me into some imagined catastrophic future, I refused to go. I took a deep breath and stayed grounded in the present: the place where Bill and I are together in our home. It is a safe place.

I was doing so well. I started to feel rather smug about my spiritual progress. Here I was faced with a potential crisis and I was at peace. I was a frickin Buddha. I sat down at my desk to check my email. There was a message from a friend full of simple kindnesses. Suddenly my face was wet with tears.

Almost immediately I had a name for the place these tears came from. I thought: pain-body. It is a term coined by Eckhart Tolle to refer to the pain we carry with us: unresolved grief associated with past events. The events of the day had reawakened in me the pain body that is linked to past abandonment.

There is only one way to deal with the pain body. You have to name it, honor it, nurture it, invite it to tea. Like a baby, it needs to held and rocked and sung to.