Nun Better

 I have often shared how I think the best thing that happened to us since we came to the USA was the opportunity to discover the Queen of Peace nursing home in Queens Village. A nun from the home visited our parish back in 2015 and gave what may have been the least coherent but at the same time the most powerful speech I ever heard. My wife was entranced and we started volunteering at the home soon afterwards.

 

The home is run by resident nuns and is co-located with a novitiate. There are about a hundred elderly lay residents, with the expectation that this will be their final home on earth. Some survive only a few months after arrival while others soldier on for ten years or more. The intensity of care increases as residents move from the fourth to the second and ultimately the third floor.

 

Before the pandemic there was a whole army of volunteers visiting the home, helping the nuns and employed staff in a variety of ways. Our initial task was to help to serve the evening meal on a Saturday evening. My wife and I were assigned to the second floor, while the kids served on the third. We quickly realised that the staff could quite easily serve the meal without us, and our real function was to befriend the residents, giving them somebody else to pass time with. Over the years we have struck up lasting friendships with many residents, and many of them look forward to our visits and truly value our company. It can help them to stay healthy for longer and to find additional peace in what remains of their lives. In turn that love rebounds on us, filling us with joy and companionship. We always return from the home in a great mood.

 

After a year or two I expanded my service to include visiting to cantor a mass for them one weekday, and then to be a driver for residents with medical appointments around Long Island. Visits stopped abruptly when the pandemic struck and residents needed to be isolated from each other and inessential outsiders. A nun confided in me that she thought the pandemic aged residents on average by about five years, though mercifully there were few Covid deaths there. Cautiously, life has been returning to normal during 2023, and we are proud to be welcomed as part of a much smaller (so far) cadre of volunteers. Now we serve Sunday dinner, and I have just restarted going back there to sing occasionally too. Sadly, driving is off limits now as my condition means that I can no longer drive.

 

Over the years the home has offered us some of the funniest moments we can recall. My wife still tells the story of our very first visit, when one resident had the cheek to ask me what floor I resided on. The sad afternoon when I shared the news of my tumour with the residents was punctuated by a very deaf lady at one table replying to “I have a brain tumour” with a cheerful “Is it raining?” One centurion introduced the state of her bowels into virtually every sentence. Another insisted repeatedly that in earlier years he had been saved from a shark attack by a passing dolphin taking a ride on the back of a whale.

 

A large part of the mission of the order of nuns at the home is service. At Queen of Peace, that translates into helping the residents (including several retired nuns) to be as contented as possible during their final years and to prepare for a peaceful death. They perform this job magnificently. We have seen many miracles there. A common pattern is for a resident to be quite disturbed when they first come to the home but to become noticeably more at ease the longer they live there.

 

With my diagnosis, several of my thoughts are about being ready for death as well. I have listened carefully to the gospels of the last few weeks, seeking inspiration, not necessarily divine. I have never before thought of the advent message so clearly in this way, an d I have found that It makes more sense to me using the message as being ready to die in peace rather than anything concerning second comings or final judgements.

 

So my mind is on this morbid readiness, and the nuns I am privileged to meet every week are paragons of carers of people at the end of life, so surely there are some useful points to learn here. They might help me or my carers as the illness progresses. In fact they might help anybody, as we never know when illness may strike or when an elderly relative may require such care.

 

The primary way the nuns do their work is by example. You don’t hear long sermons from any of them. Their faith is clear to see, but they don’t ram it down anyone’s throat. Instead, they demonstrate lives of simplicity, humility, prayer, companionship, acceptance, generosity, kindness, compassion, and self-discipline. They each have their foibles, and no doubt there are disputes behind the scenes. They might not all like each other and certainly some of the residents are hard to like, but loving is more powerful than liking.

 

The toughest time for many residents is when they first arrive at the home. That stage of life can seem like a series of defeats, and moving into assisted living may be one of the biggest defeats of all. When we first meet a resident, they are often angry and rather disorientated. But the nuns make sure they have companionship and care, and soon friendships are struck and most come to embrace their new lives. This is achieved via example, sprinkled with a bit of smart cunning.

 

Then comes the time when life ebbs away. The important work has already been done, and most residents have some peace before the final days. But the nuns organise a 24 hour vigil to ensure a resident is never alone in their last days, and you can almost touch the love in the room. Occasionally we have had the privilege to be a part of that magic: one of my proudest achievements was to sing the favourite spiritual hymn to a dying priest in his last hours and to sense his appreciation.

 

The nuns don’t go around talking about death, but they don’t run away from it either. Their demeanour is designed to help the residents understand that this can be a peaceful final transition, whatever they believe. When a resident dies, there is respect and solemnity, but usually little wailing.

 

It is harder for the nuns to be able to provide much help for the families and carers of the residents because they usually have less chance to get to know these people deeply enough. But, for those family members and carers who can find time to visit, the same example is offered to them. It is surely a great comfort to know that one you have cared for and loved can find a peaceful end in the company of abundant love.

 

I am so fortunate to have Queen of Peace and its nuns and residents as role models. That list of seems like a pretty good set of attributes to aspire to. An interesting one is acceptance, because at first glance it seems in conflict with something else that people often urge me to do; that is fight. I don’t see any conflict. Of course we should fight our illnesses, not in a military or angry way, but with some steel and persistence and attempts to follow healthy practices and trust in medicine. Acceptance is the other side of the same coin. We are all unique but none of us are so unique as to be immune. Our best bet is to humbly accept what the fates have in store for us, and to find peace with that fate.

 

Thank you sisters, you are my greatest inspiration. I hope I can live, and die, showing something approaching the wonderful values you espouse. If I can, the primary beneficiary will be myself.    

Tears for Fears

 I have never been a great one for crying. I suppose I would wail as a small child as much as any other kid. But then I went to a UK boys only private school, where part of the implicit training is to learn not to show emotion or to blub. This was enforced by one’s peers, for blubbers were soon destined to be victims of bullying. I became as proficient as everyone else when it came to hiding feelings, and to literally hiding when the urge for tears was strong. That trait has not helped my quest to be a good husband or father.

 

As an adult, this training meant that I did not cry often, even in private, and I suspect it also acted as an inhibitor for being open with emotions, even to myself. I remember well the earlier crises in my life, notably the time when I abruptly departed from my first marriage and found myself alone in disgusting B&B’s. I would cry a little in those moments, and I even selected one or two mournful CD’s to play when I wanted to bring tears on, but the trickle of tears never really grew into a flood, despite all the shame and guilt.

 

If you want to induce tears in me, the best way is to take me to a darkened theatre or cinema and have me watch something sentimental. Often I will lose control of emotions, and when the lights go up and everybody is streaming out, I’ll keep my head down to avoid making my tears too public. I guess this is quite common, even among men, indeed even among repressed men. My wife is probably more typical in being driven to tears very easily by a sentimental show. She will even quietly head to the kitchen if she senses a violent or poignant scene is about to show.

 

The last twelve months of living with cancer have been different. I have found myself vulnerable to gushing tears, something that is new for me. It is hard to discern any pattern, but there are situations and places and times when I am more prone to an outburst. It also swings in cycles – some months seem to go by with nary a tear, and then the next month I find I am crying nearly every day. I am no longer so concerned with suppressing or even with hiding my emotions. But I am interested in what might be the causes of these variable patterns.

 

MSK were kind enough to refer me to a therapist, and my insurance has been kind enough to pay. I feel a bit of a fraud, because most of the time I feel quite emotionally stable. Most of our sessions seem to end with the therapist laughing and suggesting that I don’t need her very much. By now we have reduced our sessions to once a quarter, continuing in case I enter a phase when my need is greater.

 

One useful thing the therapist did for me was to encourage me to start an emotions tracker. I followed this quite religiously for the first three months or so. It is interesting re-reading the entries today. It is encouraging to note how much more stable and accepting I am now compared with the earlier phases of the illness. And there are a few clues in the tracker about what might cause me to burst into tears. If I am going to try to answer the “why” question, I suppose it would help to first analyse the “when”.

 

When do these tearful outbursts come? Overall, the trend is that they come less often. Nowadays a full month can go by with few or even no tears, but at first there were tears every week. Within that trend, there are peaks and troughs. I cry more often when not feeling well physically, or during the lead up to a procedure involving anaesthetic. There were also more tears before and during our trip to Europe in the summer, and when I was separated from my wife for a week while singing in Massachusetts. The tears most often arrive early in the morning, and when I am alone and quiet and prone to pondering. Most tears come alone, an exception being when I am parting from precious others – those goodbyes are the toughest things to cope with.

 

If that describes when I become tearful, it must help understand why. The reducing overall trend must signify a growing acceptance of my situation, together with a tentative growth of hope that the cancer might stay suppressed for an extended period. It is no surprise that the worst week for tears was the very first week I spent in hospital, receiving a torrent of bad news in a hectic environment, while also observing the anguish of my wife and family. What were these tears about? Well, initially it was grief for a loss of a long, anticipated, joyful future. Over time that grief has reduced, as I have been able to shift my focus towards celebrating a joyful present and nostalgia for a joyful past. 

 

Tears in the lead up to a procedure are also easy to explain. It is the same with every procedure, but I have been less tearful with each successive operation. One reason is that I am no longer on steroids. Steroids magnify every emotion; I was living an amped-up life at this time last year.

 

Procedures are risky moments. No matter what the surgeon says, every operation carries catastrophic risk, and the patient is sure to feel this intensely. I suspect the main cause for tearfulness prior to an operation must be fear.

 

I am fortunate in not being fearful of death itself. But I am fearful of a future so diminished as to be tough to bear for myself or for carers. The possibility of a prolonged life of constant pain, bodily malfunction or shifts in mind causing constant anguish, fill me with fear. I suppose there is not much I can do about it, beyond reminding my loved ones not to keep life-support machines operational on my account.

 

Then there is another fear, that of not being ready. The gospels of the last few weeks have been helpful here, even for somebody with little confidence in a second coming or pearly gates or final judgement. Our experience at the old folks home has also been invaluable, observing others prepare to die and their carers helping them with love.

 

Being ready offers peace in any situation, and being ready for death is peaceful too, even in a more extreme situation. In the days before my first biopsy, fuelled by steroids, I spent every hour trying to make myself ready for death. My mum or grandma might have articulated that by making sure she always wore clean knickers in case an ambulance driver or passer-by would spot dirty ones, but I was thinking about legacy. From writing hurried last wishes to sharing bank passwords and expressing love, I was trying to do what I could to ensure that those that I love have the best possible chance of thriving after I am gone. The pace was frenzied so long as I was on steroids, and has slowed since, but I still have one eye on being ready. I am thrilled to observe my wife preparing herself too. There will be tears, but she will be fine; they all will.

 

We should always think that way, even if not in immediate jeopardy, because a sense of readiness is a wonderful gift. We should strive to end every engagement on a loving note, and to mend any broken relationships as a priority. This is a gift to those we love who survive us. It is also a gift to ourselves, because peace only becomes more valuable as we approach the end. Nowadays I have little remaining fear of not being ready, and that is an enormous comfort.

 

I wonder if there is another cause for my tearful outbursts, unrelated to grief or fear. There is something I might describe as awe, when I wake up and quietly ponder how my life has been transformed. That can be sad, especially while every waking thought came with a strong context of cancer, but it can also be awesome. I have had a privileged time on earth, and perhaps have more time to look forward to. I have moments of awe when I get a chance to sing a favourite anthem with friends, perhaps more so if my mind is wondering if it will be the last time. I have joyful memories, I have a little pride, and I have love.

 

I suspect that sort of thought is often what presages tearful outbursts. Is that thankfulness, or humility, or care for loved ones? It may be a mixture of all those feelings and some others. In any case, when the tears flow, they are profoundly welcome.