According to Webster’s ametaphor is a literary figure of speech that describes a subject “by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object”. I have noun, verbs, and adverbs bouncing around my head and being a Neuropsychologist these last 30+ years, I am trying to understand what my ‘firing’ neurons are saying to me.
Mypersonal definition of self is a neuropsychologist melded with the combined (in chronological order) ‘selves’ as child, sibling, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother and of late, Cancer Patient. My nights have become very long and my iPad and I think a lot during that time, which is a less than optimal activity given mystate of being(existential issues) with many ideas and words popping into my head.
Complicating matters further we first moved to Israel in the late ‘60s and left in June of 1973 for a ‘sabbatical’ -- seven years of working and studying in various States of The Union-- to return in 1980 and live, study and work here in Israel ever since.I feel that the ‘bouncing ideas’ are somewhat as the Luigi Pirandello PlaySix Characters in Search of an Author, words/ideas, in search of a metaphor to meld them.
Here they are:
Non-Compete /Non-Proliferation Clause Aren’t you angry at Gd? Arab Spring/Arab Fall Martyrs—Those who Shout Allah Akbar vs. Shema Yisrael Excellence/Perfection and Akedat Yitzchat
Looking at them in the light of day, I begin to see their connections to ME at this point in time.
My Cancer, Stage IVB Grade III at diagnosis July 2010 --‘Top Marks’ with almost no ‘wiggle room’ for any forward movement on top of the earth-- is with me as a partner ‘for keeps’.IT has refused to ‘sign’ a Non-Compete contract(which I refer to as a ‘Non-proliferation Treaty’), a form that most people in business sign on employment, actually a type of ‘pre- nuptial agreement’ hoping against hope that the ‘marriage’ won’t end, but if it will, certain ‘protections’ will be in place.
I have been asked many times by the well-meaning ‘helping/fix-it people’ (I somehow define MY psychological interventions differently I guess);I don’t, given my the developmental/ medical/surgical and all around clinically pathological population of the patients I see, feel I can ‘FIX-IT’. I fervently pray that I can help them see ‘Yesterday and Today’ as givens, and ‘Tomorrow’ as a four dimensional ‘place’ where, in light of the realities, we have choices how to Live-By-Them and Live-With-Them beyond their manifest limitations .
These well-meaning folk have a repertoire of interacting with a ‘Terminal’ patient that , I guess using the seminal work of Kubler-Ross, includes ‘ANGER’ which beckons them to ask: “Are you angry at God? ” Not infrequently, I have been made to feel ‘inadequate’ in the ‘healing process’ by not exhibiting this ‘obvious’ behavioral response (??!!!??’)—it is as if the cancer would ‘go away’ if only I would ‘accept’ being angry at Gd. My response to them, and to myself, has been: “To whom will I pray if I am angry at God and, more so, if I undermine my belief system?” This is met with incredulity, and not infrequently, with protestations that I am in a ‘place’ called Denial. I might add that they also see my lack of crying on ‘therapeutic demand’ and carrying on my life irrespective of medical interventions --which at the same time are both life-prolonging and life-threatening—with suspended belief in my getting ‘past’ and ‘working through’ my ‘condition’. I staunchly believe Prayers, those of mine, my family and my greater brethren and sisterhood—my Am Yisrael Family, help me second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day. So, I have generally ‘chosen’ with my feet and have not returned to ‘those types’ for ‘help’.
I have been fortunate to find other more enlightened, experienced, and medically aware mental health colleagues, who are able to quietly absorb the Pain, and not respond in ‘plasticized/Teflon like’platitudinal formulae. I am saddened by the hordes of patients who are not aware enough of their options, and ‘learn’ to blame themselves for not being ‘healed’ of the un-healable, but rather be strengthened by a professional who will aid them in finding, and ‘mining’ from within themselves, the strength to identify and live with the choices that are theirs to make. A wonderful internet site that offers the ill, family and friends a place to learn, vent and share is www.csn.org/forum , the Cancer Survivors Network. Cancer Survivorsbeing those of us who are currently above the ground (sorry, my black sense of humor permeates all). There,on the site, is a list of various cancer diagnoses and one clicks on the ‘appropriate’ ListServ. The multinational ‘folks’, and in my case having a ‘female’ cancer, Women,who I have ‘met’, are smart, wise, sharing of their experiences, and most of all,supportive and life affirming.
We all observed from afar, well each one of us from as far as we could, the ‘Arab Spring’. Hoping that maybe at long last they, the nations around us, would finally ‘spring’ into democracy and something approaching the 21st Century. Well, here we are in the ‘Arab Fall’, meaning not only the climatic season, but also the Climactic events of watching how they are imploding and ‘de-springing’ or spiraling into the mire and quicksand of the VERY early undemocratic rule of earlier fanatic and feudal centuries.As frenetic as life here in Israel is, where Bet Shemesh, the home of many of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, has become an icon/epicenter of News Bites for fanatics, especially those pointing up the separatism between the sexes and those of varying religious orientations, all in the nameof religion, you might be surprised to learn the events of this Sukkot Holiday. Hundreds of children from various (mostly Anglo-Saxon—which is how English speakers are known here) neighborhoods went ‘Trick-and-Treating’ yesterday as they Sukka Hopped making, in all probability, their dentists drool! They walked around aged two years and onward carrying plastic or other large bags, in pairs or in somewhat larger groups, not all at the same time so as not to totally deplete the candies and goodies left out in the Sukkot for those coming behind them, nor frighten the hosts of the oncoming cavalcade.
Ironic, isn’t it, that this same freedom of movement is certainly not the rule in ‘safe’ USAat any time, most poignantly as last summer’s kidnap, torture and murder of an Ultra-Orthodox child in his Brooklyn neighborhood taught us, but even is secular neighborhoods around the USin two weeks’ time,that ofCandy Hopping, i.e. All Saints Day, a.k.aHalloween!
‘Safe and Wellness’ is what I feel very seldom in my condition, but seeing the beatific cherubic smiles and faces of our Sukka visitors and their sense of safety walking around with their ‘stash’ of goodies, brought warmth and yes, a sense of wellbeing, to my heart and soul.
I bring lastly the week’s big news item here, as I heard from my USA family and friends that it didn’t reach across the Atlantic, there was a small contingent of Rangers, soldiers, whose ‘job’ it was to give water to fleeing-from-sure-death African illegal emigrants, they wereambushed by a heavily armed and body-boob- trapped group of terrorists. The ‘group’ of soldiers was comprised of a few 18-19 year old conscripts both ‘men’ and ‘women’. One (Kippa Seruga) male soldier, after being mortally wounded, managed to kill one of the Terrorist infiltrators and wound another; another soldier, actually a combat-ready female soldier, not a regular sight on the front lines here, managed to kill another terrorist; seeing no military backup and the uneven numbers of Terrorists vs. Soldiers in the vicinity, a third soldier, another young woman, with the recent memory of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit’syears of capture and torture, hid in the bramble.
The Army rightly so, lauded the bravery of the dead soldier and the woman who shot and killed the terrorists. The one who hid was reprimanded, whereupon many newspaper articles and op-ed columns derided the army’s heavy handedness and derision in her case, and referred to her bravery to hide so as to fight another day.Though honestly, a group of soldiers who came to the site soon after the ‘event’did put their lives at danger looking for her for a half an hour.
Moving along with my seemingly disjunctive associations, I find my reaction to living in this ‘neck-of-the-woods’, Israel, interesting. Our country, not being the beneficiary of friendly neighbors, plus, lest we forget this reality, the hourly CNN, BBC and FOX etc.NEWS channels’ constant bombardment of theairwaves, with the FEAR of imminent death and nuclear disaster, at best acutely ‘illuminating’. It is almost a relief to think just of my ‘nuclear’ world, myself, my family, and my own internal combustibility as the ‘bad-buggers’ (as I call them) proliferatein various spots in my anatomical map --not having signed the Non-Compete/Non- Proliferationcontract. Thank God (see, I do need HIM), my various specialist oncologists(and I) have been somewhat successful as the proverbial‘Little Dutch Boy’, placing ‘fingers’ in the holes in the dyke (i.e. using miraculous Radiation delivery systems, deft surgery, and
chemotherapy) waylaying and delaying a sadly bitter end.
And so these ‘random’ thoughts relate to my own ‘case’ where, try as I might to ‘shoot’ the ‘bad buggers’ who have stolen into my body, I am happily lying low in whatever ‘briar patch’ Hashem and the field of medicine has to offer, giving me more time to fight another day.
Continuing my bombarding thoughts, after reading on Yom Kippur of the Binding of Isaac (Akedat Yitzchak), with Abraham preforming the tenth of ten ‘trials’ to prove to God that he is truly a believer by taking his beloved son, the only child of he and our Fore-mother Sarah, and prepare to offer him up as a sacrifice. I recall noting as a childlearning this in Yeshiva elementary school, I guess blasphemed to the teacher, that it seemed to me that the price of excellence and perfection before God, was so high as to require the death of ones child. Clearly, in my explicit memory, Irecall my teacher’s saying that Hashem never expected to have Isaac be a human sacrifice, as this is profoundly against all of what Judaism and God stand for. But, I also recall how I pushed on, as I was wont to do (generally ending up getting sent to the principal’s office), saying Abraham didn’t know God’s plan and acted in ‘good faith’ as it were. There was a happy ending, well almost, if you don’t pay attention to some commentaries who say that Sarah may have died of a heart attack on hearing, from a ‘bad’ angel, about the ‘sacrifice of Isaac’ before the final good denouement. The Good Ending was that a Ram was found caught by its horns in the brambles, and hence we blow the Shofar, Ram’s Horn, at the close of Yom Kippur to remind God of the extent our Forefather went when he ‘proved’, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was a exquisite believer.
These events, and the heavily armed suicide-murder-seeking terrorist’s shout moments before their death, of Allah Akbar, God is Great, brought to mind a great difference between US and THEM. Before we die we acknowledge our sins and say “Shema Yisrael Hashem Elo/h/ainu Hashem Echad”- Here O Israel (Jacob) Your God is Our God, Your God is One. We don’t scream God Is Great, as we are about to murder in his name, but we leave this world reaffirming our connection with our heritage, with our forefather Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) and The Covenant, unbreakable ‘contract’He made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that We,His Chosen People, will live on, beyond whichever madness is around an/or within us. That is my prayer to me, my nuclear family and my larger family, the Jewish People.
Shanna Tova and G’Mar Tov --May this be a Happy, Healthy New Year and May there be Good Endings.