Manifesting Joy During Despair

In two days my mother will have her second surgery this year.  The goal is to try to remove more of the cancer that has spread in her body.  It will be a longer and more invasive surgery this time, and the recovery time will be lengthier as well.  The current treatment plan is to begin chemotherapy 3 weeks post-surgery.

All of these facts terrifies my mother.

It is against this backdrop that I brought her to the beach this past weekend.

At first, she was in no mood for it.  Understandably. 

Eventually though, without too much arm twisting, she agreed and climbed in my truck for the 1 hour drive to the Atlantic Ocean; this was after I threw in the promise of a seafood meal and time with her 2 year-old granddaughter which might have helped.

We spent the next 4 hours mindfully feeding our senses by watching my daughter play in the sand, listening to the waves crash against the shoreline, riding bikes along the nearby salt marsh, and eating yummy scallops and french fries.  And there was joy.

Here are some of the photographs I took that day…

Within about 10 minutes of our drive home though, my mother began to worry out loud again about the surgery.  She began to express concerns about the VNA who would be coming to her house. About the 5-6 months of chemotherapy and radiation following the surgery…Etc. Etc.

As I listened quietly to her speak, I tried to remember German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875-1926) famous words that have helped me in so many other difficult situations:

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.  Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

I think memorable quotations can be like great works of music or art in that at any given moment, we can draw some different meaning from the offering that enhances our life in some new way. 

This past weekend, Rilke’s words reminded me that it is vital to intentionally bring in moments of joy and happiness--as well as future aspirations--during times of great turmoil.  In fact, I think it is as necessary to our soul as air is to our lungs.

So I’m glad my mother decided to join my daughter and me for a day at the beach this past weekend.

I know it did not solve all her problems. I know it did not take away her pain.  But perhaps when we nourish the soul with activities and people that we love at the most unlikely of times, it does full-fill an unarticulated need that can be a catalyst for a life worth living even with the inevitable pain and suffering that accompanies it.