When you work in a field like pediatric oncology you learn more about grief and loss than you're prepared for. It's inevitable, an occupational hazard of sorts. There have been too many families I've seen decimated by loss. It's hard. It's painfully hard. That hard has changed my life in ways that are profound and frightening.
I have a profound appreciation for health. For children who effortlessly ride bikes and skateboard and play soccer. I have a deep appreciation for the silly things like flu and molluscum and strep throat. I regard those childhood ailments as annoyances most of the time. Like a splinter. My kids don't appreciate that one bit. To them, it's no silly annoyance. Especially since my children inherited a very strong hypochondriac gene that screams bloody murder at the sight of a splinter. My eldest had a minor surgical procedure when he was 8 or 9 (who remembers such a minor thing?) and you would've thought he was going in for an organ transplant. My threshold for that behavior is quite low so my children suffer. "Walk it off" is heard in my home on a daily basis. The eldest who is now 12 finally got it when he said "Mommy, just because it's not cancer doesn't mean it doesn't hurt!" So I felt like the worlds shittiest parent. But it's kind of 100% accurate. My job has changed me in that way and it's irreversible.
The frightening way my life has changed in this world of pediatric oncology is that I've been a witness to so much loss and grief it's hard to even qualify it. Suffice it to say it's gut punching sad in a way that makes you weak in the knees and almost vomit. It's the kind of sad that, as humans, we desperately need to make it go away because it's too painful to have in our space. Witnessing that kind of grief has taught me more about life and faith and humanity than any book or class ever could. Here's what it taught me and why it scares me to my core: Faith is the only thing that gets you through it.
The one common theme I've seen played over and over in the last 15 years of my career is this: the families with faith survive. The ones that don't have faith (shockingly few in the South) make it too. But poorly. The faithful have a peace that's astonishing to see. In the depths of despair they have hope. When they experience unimaginable loss, they don't go dark. They don't reject life nearly as much as ones without faith.
This is a terrifying thought for me. As an agnostic and a cynic -- I fear that I will be the latter. The one that goes dark. The one that has no safety net. The one who's left in a meaningless void. But what can you do if you don't have that faith? It's not the kind of thing you can fake it until you make it. It's been a long process for me to get to this point and I can't just suddenly be faithful because I need to be.
Shulem Deen articulates it well:
"Harder than losing faith was finding meaning without it. ... The non-believer is awed by the vastness of the cosmos precisely because we know nothing of the forces beyond what our scientific instruments can discern. The non-believer, in humility, knowing how little we truly know, is awed by the unknown and finds majesty in the mystery... The non-believer must be attuned to love and kindness and empathy and forgiveness and charity -- the ultimate enterprise of humanity -- for their own sake, not to please a deity; the purpose of these virtues becomes an end in itself rather than a means for entry to a pleasant afterlife. The non-believer makes humanism life's project, since, given what we know of our universe, no one else has placed us at its center.
Read more: http://forward.com/my-heretical-year/344376/how-tammuz-helped-me-find-meaning-in-a-godless-universe/#ixzz4Eljs32xD
The idea of finding the majesty in the mystery requires so much effort. It's digging a path with your bare hands parallel to a smooth paved path that people walk down with far less effort. You sweat and bleed and keep digging. It's hard. You have zero insurance policy. You also have zero alternative. I am not kind and empathic to my patients because of god. I do it out of a sense of humanity. God actually plays no role in it. When horrifically painful things happen, I am not comforted by god. I don't envision spirits and angels and heaven and joy. I envision an end. I envision the pain. And I can be empathic in a very raw and basic way.
I do believe in a greater force in the universe. I absolutely do. I am not an atheist. I just know nothing about that force. The only thing I know to be true is that I will need this force at some point in my life to catch me in my grief. I'm just not so sure it will.