43 - WHAT TO DO WIT THE "WHAT-IFS"

We look around at those who have disabling phobias like the fear of heights or tight places or spiders and we think it is strange. The agoraphobic confines himself at home for fear of going outside. His world shrinks, avoidance behavior reigns. The fear of death does the same thing and imprisons many with walls that are hard to see. Both new and old relationships are walled off because they are perceived as too painful and what's the point? New endeavors are walled off because there might not be time to finish.  Travel and adventure are walled off because one might get sick or die along the way. Asking for help or special consideration at work and home can be walled off out of fear of being rejected or being a burden. Going out in public or social events can be walled off by vanity or the fear of embarrassing side effects. None of these walls need exist, yet I have known patients who lived small lives behind these poisonous walls. Sometimes they were walls inherited from their parents, sometimes built by friends, or by dramatizations in the media.

IT’S THE WHAT-IFS  THAT BUILD THE WALLS

They are the imagination’s questions that are always knocking at the door of tomorrow's unknowns. They are the breath of the Dragon whispering nightmares in the dark - even to those in remission. Sometimes they are something the doctor said or didn't say, which could have been clarified on the spot but wasn't. Some they are a riptide of confusing lab reports or foreign new symptoms that whipsaw your helpless emotions. Sometimes they are the contagion of your neighbor’s fear casually offered, “What if?” When you collect enough of them, you can build your own prison and crawl inside.

Curiously some people hear the same whispers but remain immune. They experienced the same limitations from their cancer but not from fear. They seem to know something that the rest of us don’t.

For the rest the legion of death’s fears vanquishes all efforts to retain control and invites resignation, despair and cynicism. They die quietly and uneventfully at home or in a hospital. None are in control, all succumbing to that which cannot be avoided any longer, most having accepted their fate and are just too tired to be terrified any longer, numb from being uncertain for so long.

 Some observers kid themselves in describing a numb death as peaceful, when in reality it is just plain exhausted. The difference is readily apparent to anyone who has seen both; a numb death is nothing like a peaceful one. I’ve been watching for years. It seems to have to do with bliss and surrender, and, yes, trust.

Those who die in peace seemed to have something spiritual is going on that doesn't require their control or understanding, something that apparently transcends human knowledge, yet is humanly knowable, something that redefines for them what others call “the end.” Perhaps it is the same thing that brought purpose and energy to their whole bell lap revealed one step at a time right up to the end. Even hospital staff just passing through their room to check vital signs or draw blood would come out saying, "There's something special going on with the patient in room 302."