“You’re nothing but a big baby,” my wife said this morning, and she’s right. After a visit to the doctor’s - just because they kept bugging me about it - I have been almost shattered. Not that cancer was found, or MS or anything devastating like that. Rather, bloodwork showed that bad things could be about to happen: high fat and glucose levels have me heading for heart and stroke problems along with the possibility of diabetes. Nothing yet, mind you, but hell, they tell me, because you are FAT (it’s all your fault, you porker) you’re going to DIE! Oh, and get a booster. And a flu and shingles shot. Porker.
This said in not those exact words but pretty darn close, so much so that I found myself shaking like a dog at the Vets when the ordeal was over. Because I am over 65, they had also given me a dementia test, which I passed with flying colors despite being a porker, but I was so disoriented that I could not find my way out of the clinic. I had to ask, and then quickly looked around for the men in the white coats to take me away.
It’s like that: walk into the doctor’s or a hospital, and you lose all dignity and mature volition. Once again, you are a kid creeping around a middle school filled with teachers, always on the verge of being caught committing some mortal sin. Never mind that we truly are intended to live only about three score and ten without modern medical attention, and that almost everyone has something not quite up to par with them by their late ‘60’s; never mind that it’s normal to get old and die; never mind that life is not a race, and that we don’t live to live longer than the next sucker, but to live. Or at least should
But, yeah, I’m a baby. I don’t want to be told what to do, and I don’t want to be told I am going to die soon because I alone, and in a vicious and careless way, have turned myself into a fat slob. That kind of talk starts fights just about anywhere else. So OK, I’m a baby, but my abject cowardice didn’t start at the doctor’s office yesterday, where the voice of the God Doctor chastised me over a group of numbers on a sheet of paper (the book of Sins). No. The cringing baby-man that was me coming from the doctor’s office yesterday started his journey into pathetic-ville nearly a month before at the dentist.
Ah, the dentist. Usually, the dentist is filled with pain and expense but rarely with derogatory or life-changing chatter. No one likes to go, but it usually amounts to only a stain upon the day, and maybe a groan as the next dates for a root canal and cap are discussed. Not so a month ago. After the standard time-consuming cleaning, the dentist always comes by to give the mouth a quick once-over. Usually that’s it, although sometimes a pick is sent towards a tooth that creates a shock of pain and the dentist issues a phrase like, “number 27 distal, carries,” meaning that you’re coming back for a drill. But this time, the voice of authority said, “Ah, see that there? (Said to the hygienist, not the silent victim.) White on the side of the tongue. Always note the white.” Then to me, “I’ve noticed a white sore on the side of the tongue. You always have to check that. Come back in two weeks and if it’s still there, I’ll send you to a specialist to fix you up.” Although I can tell you for almost sure that her tone didn’t mean “if” but “when.”
Yes, she’ll send me to a specialist who specializes in hideous cases of mouth and tongue cancer. I knew what she meant right off the bat but didn’t think much of it. I had mentioned to her a semi-memory of having bitten my tongue in my sleep a few nights before, but she only repeated, “When you see white, you have to check.” Still, there was nothing to worry about. It most certainly was a cut from a bite and would go away soon.
Unless it wouldn’t. A week later I started checking the spot several times a day. I looked up “tongue cancer” on Google, and found out awful stuff about it. One gets it primarily by smoking a pipe, which I did in my middle years, with drinking heavily, which I did in my earlier years, and getting papilloma virus from unprotected sex, which I may have gotten during those early years of heavy drinking because no one is really careful at closing time, especially back in those days of radical and foolish freedom in the ‘70’s. Usually - the advice continued - by the time it showed up, it was already deep into the lymph glands and would require chemo and radiation and radical surgery, including removal of the lower jaw and large sections of the tongue. Even then, the 5 year survival rate for males was only 25%.
The weekend after that, and only two days before the fateful return to the dentist, we did our planned “Walk to Mary” from Green Bay to the Shrine of our Lady of Good Hope in Champion, the only approved Marian visionary site in the US. It is a 21 mile walk that begins at 7:30 AM., and the first prayer one does is for good weather. This we got. We also were swept into a surprise confession where the priest admonished me to pray to the Virgin throughout the walk. The walk was long and torturous, as it had been the last time we did it 4 years earlier, but there was something transcendental about it this time. I felt that I was really walking with Mary, corny as that might sound. I was often consciously above the physical self with one foot in that spiritual realm that we all inhabit but usually do so without noticing. It was wonderful in a way that would not seem wonderful to anyone watching objectively. This was not a true ecstasy, but rather a promise of it to come. The walk was worth every blistering mile.
Then came the next day. There was the usual intense soreness, of course, but also a sense that the sore on my tongue had gotten worse. I would go to the dentist the following day, Monday, and with this, I knew she would send me to the “specialist.” There, the best I could hope for was a biopsy and then a long week or so of waiting for the dreaded results, after which I would be proclaimed OK. That was the best. With two and possibly three bases covered for getting the disease, it seemed to me that it was more likely that I would get the thumbs down and then start the long and torturous slide into a painful and unsightly death. Even though a gentle voice told me that I was just fine (you baby!), I dismissed this as wishful thinking. That night I forced myself to go through the long agonies of the process, preparing myself for everything from jaw-removal to saying goodbye to the family. I did not think I would sleep, but eventually did.
Next morning was bright and cheerful. I knew I was better, and a check in the mirror showed that every last trace of the sore – the bight mark, I now knew for sure – was gone. Just like that. It was a miracle that the dentist confirmed an hour later. All that worry was for nothing, or so I thought. But then came the infamous doctor’s visit a week later, as stated above, where the good physician actually yelled at me, his reddened face glowing above his silly white mask: “You can do what I tell you or I’ll put you on pills!” He really said that. A few minutes later found me stunned and walking around in a circle looking for the exit, a confusion enhanced, no doubt, by having eaten too many 80% cacao chocolate bars.
That was two days ago (now four) as I write this, and since then I’ve been thinking. Sure, there was rudeness and abruptness with the diagnosticians, but what the heck did I expect? It is a certainty that life will bring pain, agony and finally death. This is not pessimism or dark drama, but a fact. When such certainties arrive at the door, we should not be surprised at all. If we were sane, and if our worldly self had its head on right, we would simply sigh or shrug and brace ourselves with quiet stoicism for this painful, and perhaps last chapter, in our lives. That we (or at least, we babies) should be shocked is a sign that our thinking and our self-perceptions are entirely wrong. If we have failed to bring such certainties into our lives, what else have we failed to do? That is, just how ignorant are we?
Back to the Walk to Mary; On the last 5 miles of the walk, we met up with the priest who was largely responsible for the Walk, a Father Rocky, who is famous among many Wisconsin Catholics. The question that I had in my mind all day surfaced as I talked to him: Why do we do this? It was not that I thought it silly, but that I didn’t understand the compulsion that we and thousands of others had to suffer for nothing more than an idea that would not bring wealth or fame or even political freedom. His answer was that we did it because we were called, and that this was a form of our devotion and love, which would be recognized and reciprocated.
This gave for some food for thought, which had led me to this: we walk, and we worship, because we know that there is something far greater to this world than we ordinarily understand. We walk and suffer and endure because suffering and endurance are what life is finally all about. We do both because we recognize that somehow, the one – the greatness beyond us – and our inevitable agony and death - are intertwined; that is, that our mortality is intimately linked to our immortality. When we recognize one, we should recognize the other. That is sanity; that is truth. And that we may experience a little miracle here and there along the way is further proof that this world is only a shadow of a greater world.
So my tears and trembling when confronted with pain and death are the tears of a baby who resents the slap on his bottom at birth, even though that is necessary for further survival. These are wake-up calls, to bring us out of the cocoons we have built around our near-sighted egos. What we believe to be real is not, even though the roots of truth are right before us. Ultimately, we must realize that we have nuthin’ to lose in this mortal coil, just as a diagnoses of advanced cancer makes all our material possessions seem as nothing. That is the truth exposed. The curse of knowing we are going to die is also our greatest blessing, bringing us back to what is really important and what is the more real. Even miracles are only bright nuggets in light of the vastness we stand before each and every moment, even though we convince ourselves to look the other way.