How

I began writing this post last night after a "dark" day. I call it a "dark" day because Anthony was struggling with horrible pain, after-effects of anesthesia, reactions to powerful pain meds, all while trying to process the definitive diagnosis of his pancreatic cancer. It was a sad day and I was very sad when I started to write. As my writing evolved, however, I began to find some light in the darkness. For me, that is more than chance. It is God working in my life....and God works miracles.

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WHen did you leave? I didn’t even see you leave the room. I’ve been here, the whole time, so I don’t understand how you could have left without my noticing. Wait, let me look again...OK, I see your face. Yep, those are your eyes looking at me. But, only your eyes are looking at me...YOU are looking at something else... YOU look like you are someplace else.

WHere did you go? It’s kind of confusing for me because I see a person lying in your hospital bed that looks like you. Sort of. He’s got the same hair color and eyes. He’s exactly your height and weight. He’s even wearing your wedding band. I know it’s yours because it matches mine...exactly...of course it would. We had to have matching wedding bands. We picked them out together... like we do everything else...Together.

WHat are you saying? I hear words coming out of your mouth, but they sound unfamiliar to me. You are talking, but it doesn’t sound like you...what you are saying, how you are saying things... just doesn’t sound like my Anthony. I’m going to chalk it all up to illness and medication and pain and a strange environment and a wicked disease and fear and frustration and confusion and anything else that adds to the unpredictability and incredulity and  insanity of this moment. It’s OK....even I am hard to understand right now.

WHo are the doctors and nurses talking about? Surely, they are not talking about you. Surely they are not saying that you have inoperable, incurable pancreatic cancer. Maybe they’re talking about someone else’s Anthony...not my Anthony. There has to be another patient named Anthony, and they must be talking about him. Well, they could be. 

WHy is this happening? Why are we spending our days in a hospital room instead of in a classroom...teaching our students what we would normally be teaching them during the third week of September? Why are you lying alone in that hospital bed, unable to get comfortable, regardless of how many different ways you can adjust it?...And, why am I all scrunched up on a recliner that doesn’t recline enough for a four-year-old to sleep comfortably on it? Why aren’t we at home, soundly asleep in our own bed, wrapped around each other so closely that I breathe in what you breathe out?

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I suppose I could go on asking question after question using those well known “WH” interrogative pronouns. You know...the five big ones we learned way back in grammar school: WHo, WHat, WHen, WHere, WHy...Yes, I could ask and ponder and speculate all day long and never really come up with an answer that makes any sense, as far as Anthony’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer goes. Truthfully, something like this never really makes  any sense. 

All that said, there is one more word I might consider using in my chain of seemingly answer-less questions. Do you remember the last “WH” word in the sequence? (That’s actually a trick question because it’s the only one that doesn’t begin with WH!) I bet you remember now...That’s right, it’s “How.” When I start to think of sentences, questions, that begin with this stand-alone word, I realize there are as many answers as there are questions. For example, “How can I grow in faith through this trial?” “How can I transform my pain into love?” “How can I help others who can’t think of any ‘How’ questions because they’re concentrating on all the things that bring more confusion than clarity?” “How can I continue to find the everyday, ordinary miracles in life while helping my husband battle a disease most people call incurable and hopeless?” 

Yes, I like the “How” questions much better. It’s not that they are easier to answer. No way are they easier. But there’s an abundance of hope to be found when we begin asking ourselves “How?”