In those turbulent times of the sixties and seventies, I knew little nor understood much about those young men and women who, by choice or by the call of the draft, were sent into war, a war that polarized a nation at home, that had no ticker tape parades and welcoming crowds to celebrate those veterans when they returned home, so divisive were the politics of the time.

I am still a pacifist all these decades later, still against war, and admittedly disheartened by the tenor of political debate in my country.  But I realize,  much more than I did as an idealistic youth of the sixties, the costs of war on the human spirit, on the lives of those who have fought in any war, for any nation.  That service to one’s country, whatever I may feel about war itself, is an extraordinary sacrifice.

I am saddened by the costs of war—the losses, injuries that mark a human being forever, the ruin and devastation too often left in the wake of battle.  All morning, I’ve been listening to the voices of veterans, their remembrances featured on NPR this Memorial Day Weekend, and I am touched by the bravery and humbled by their stories.

First celebrated as a national holiday on May 30, 1868, and called “Decoration Day,” it was intended to honor the soldiers who died in the Civil War.   The commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, General John Logan, is said to have chosen the end of May as the official holiday because there would be more flowers in bloom.  Those flowers were subsequently placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery in an act of reconciliation.  Now Memorial Day is celebrated on the final Monday of May, and it honors all U.S. troops who have died in war.

As a child, I didn’t fully understand the meaning of Memorial Day.  I thought it was simply a date meant to honor the dead—no matter how they died, because every Memorial Day holiday, my father’s extended family  numbering between fifty or sixty aunts, uncles and cousins,  gathered at the family graveside in Hornbrook, a small town in Northern California.  While my aunts and uncles paid tribute to their deceased relatives, placing bouquets of flowers on their gravesites, we restless children turned the cemetery into a place of exploration, examining all the different gravesites dotting the grounds and challenging one another to find the headstone with the oldest dates engraved on it.

Perhaps it’s why, as I consider the traditions of our national holiday,  I remember other kinds of battles and the lives that have been lost in them.  I feel the need to pause and remember warriors of a different sort, but like our soldiers, ones who faced fear and uncertainty, felt the relentless stalking by a silent enemy–cancer–and yet demonstrated enormous courage and strength, even as the odds were stacked against them.   Their names linger in my mind:  Wendy, Varda, Jean, George, Carol, Laura, John, Parvathy, Ady, Shirley, Joan, so many more.  I see their faces, remember their stories and each of them.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed The National Moment of Remembrance Act,” calling upon all Americans to pause at 3 p.m., local time, on Memorial Day and remember those who died fighting for the United States.  I plan to do that, but I’ll be remembering more than those who died fighting this country’s wars.  I’ll honor all those who, throughout history, have lost their lives to battle.

Your silent tents of green

We deck with fragrant flowers

Yours has the suffering been,

The memory shall be ours.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow–

Tagged: expressive writing, writing and wellness, writing for cancer survivors, writing to heal ]]> http://writingthroughcancer.com/2012/05/27/1021/feed/ 3 sharonbray http://writingthroughcancer.com/2012/05/20/for-week-of-may-20-2012-natures-healing-touch/ http://writingthroughcancer.com/2012/05/20/for-week-of-may-20-2012-natures-healing-touch/#comments Sun, 20 May 2012 17:37:39 +0000 Sharon Bray http://writingthroughcancer.com/?p=1013 ]]> I’m never quite ready to leave Toronto, the city that, even now, has my heart, but I reluctantly said good-bye to my granddaughter and her parents this past week and boarded my flight to San Diego.  As the plane touched down at Lindbergh Field several hours later, my heart was heavy.  I wanted to be back in Toronto, my home for several years, walking its gracious, tree-lined streets, drinking coffee at Ezra’s Pound, or walking along Lake Ontario.  I was filled with regret that we’d ever left Canada. Even the rhythm of my usual routine failed to comfort me.  I was out of sorts, blue.

Mother Nature who rescued me from the doldrums.  It happened accidentally.  A pair of doves had been nesting in the flower boxes on our front porch.  When I’d left for Toronto, the doves were tending to two pale eggs, but while I was away, the chicks hatched.  I stood still, quietly gazing at the two baby doves peering at me from the safety of the flower box.  Springtime is a time of new life and new beginnings.  I felt my mood lighten as I walked back into the house and tossed the mail on the kitchen counter. I pulled on my clogs, stepped out on the patio and went to work, watering plants, sweeping the deck, and pulling up the weeds from the garden.  My lingering sadness began to dissipate.

I do not possess a green thumb unlike some of my friends, but my garden forgives me, perhaps understanding that I need it more than it needs me.  I’m an impulsive gardener, planting flowers or succulents on whim, many that struggle to survive in the arid soil around our house.  I tend to them as best I can; some survive and bloom.  Many do not.  Yet, despite my haphazard approach, I think my garden is actually tending to me.   I was far from the tree-lined streets of Toronto, but I experienced a quiet satisfaction as I sat and gazed across the canyon from our deck. Before I knew it, I was impulsively grabbing my garden shears to trim a shrub or a trowel to dig the wild grasses edging up the slope and into my flower beds, and I felt invigorated.  My garden brought me back to myself, to my home in San Diego.

Yesterday afternoon,  as I put away my trowel, the potting soil and broom, I recalled when Janet, from one of my San Diego writing groups, arrived late to a session.  Breathless and smiling, she still wore her gardening hat.  “I had to go out in the garden today,” she said, telling us how it helped suspend her persistent worry about her treatments.   I think of another writer, Ann, and her cabin in the redwoods—how healing her environment has been for her.  The abundance of Nature’s gifts in her redwood forest inspire her poetry.

The simple act of reconnecting with the earth and witnessing the changes of its seasons can be healing.  Planting a garden or strolling through one can make us feel better.  Studies suggest that a walk through a garden or even seeing one from the window can lower blood pressure, reduce stress and ease pain.  In a 2005 study, cardiac rehabilitation patients who visited gardens and worked with plants experienced an elevated mood and lower heart rate than those who attended a standard patient education class (USA Today, April 15, 2007).

Healing gardens have become a part of many medical centers, as hospitals and cancer centers try to create environments that will not only heal the body, but nurture the spirit.  Such gardens are not new, originating in the hospices of medieval Europe.

“Nature heals the heart and soul, and those are things the doctors can’t help,” Topher Delaney, a San Francisco landscape architect, stated in a 2002 American Cancer Society article about healing gardens.  Delaney, a breast cancer survivor, had a mastectomy in 1989.  She was 39, and after surgery, went into menopause and lost her sense of smell.  The grim surroundings of her hospitalization inspired a change in her work.

“I had my pact with God,” she said.  “Oh, God, if I get through this, then I’ll do healing gardens. You keep me alive, I’ll keep doing gardens.”  She wanted to give others the kind of retreat she wished she’d had during treatment.  ”That’s what this [healing] garden is all about — healing the parts of yourself that the doctors can’t.  The garden really gives hope because people see flowers bloom and others enjoying life,” she said. “It’s a garden full of change and metaphor”  (July 24, 2002, American Cancer Society). .

Mary Oliver, whose poetry examines the natural world, reminds us that inspiration is found in nature, and at the very least, it opens up our hearts.

“I walked, all one spring day, upstream, sometimes in the midst of the ripples, sometimes along the shore. My company were violets, Dutchman’s breeches, spring beauties, trilliums, bloodroot, ferns rising so curled one could feel the upward push of the delicate hairs on their bodies. … The beech leaves were just slipping their copper coats. Pale green and quivering they arrived into the year. My heart opened, and opened again. The water pushed against my effort, then its glassy permission to step ahead touched my ankles” (from “Upstream,” in Blue Iris, 2004).

How has Nature been healing for you?  What do you feel after you’ve allowed yourself the quiet time in nature?  Nature can also be the inspiration for writing.  Why not take your notebook outside with you?  Whether you sit quietly or walk along a path, notice what captures your attention.  Make a few notes, describing in as much detail as you can, what you see.  Begin writing by describing what you’ve observed, and then keep writing for another 15 or 20 minutes.  See where it leads you.

“even silence can feel, to the world, like happiness, like praise, from the pool of shade you have found beneath the everlasting” (from “Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater,” by Mary Oliver (in Blue Iris, 2004). 

Her mother.  My eldest daughter.  The daughter who surprised me with the intensity of her desire to have children.  “It’s all I ever wanted,” she said as we pushed Flora along the tree-lined streets in the Annex, the neighborhood where they now live.  This is a contrast to the life Elinor had for two years before Flora’s birth, living and working in Beirut, Lebanon and traveling all over the Mid-East and Europe.  While Flora’s world expands, her mother’s has shrunk to fit her daughter’s needs, and yet, it seems surprisingly natural to see my daughter as a mother.

Sunday will be Elinor’s first Mother’s Day celebration, and she’ll celebrate it with me, her mother-in-law, her daughter and husband.  We’re all being treated to a lavish brunch—by her husband– and the hotel dining room will be crowded with other families similarly honoring their mothers and grandmothers.  While Mother’s Day often seems too commercialized for my liking, its roots are much deeper than the Hallmark card sentiments, going back to the period after the Civil War and the efforts of Ann Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, who initiated “Mothers’ Work Days” in an effort to help improve sanitation.   In 1912, President Woodrow Wilson declared a national day to honor mothers, but specifically for those whose sons had died in the war.

I watch my daughter now, her days wholly devoted to Flora’s well-being and development, and I remember what it was like for me to be her mother—the worry, joy, frustrations, laughter or the turmoil of adolescence.  Motherhood is certainly not for the faint-hearted, and yet I could not imagine my life without my daughters.   But I became much more empathetic and forgiving of my mother as I navigated the challenges of motherhood.

We will be three mothers celebrating Mother’s Day together this year:  Flora’s mother and her grandmothers.  No doubt we’ll all tell stories.   Nana will describe Flora’s father as a toddler; I’ll tell of Elinor’s youthful antics; the young parents will likely share some humorous recollections of their mothers– stories that will be re-told many times as Flora learns about her extended family.

Mothers or motherhood are rich subjects for writing.  Why not mine your memories of a mother, grandmother or another person who has “mothered” you in an important way?  Your recollections may be amusing, tender, or complex.  What qualities or anecdotes best describe your mother?  How can you bring a mother to life on the page?  Here are some ideas.

• Begin with a line from a poem.  A good way to get started is to borrow a line from a poem about a mother, for example:

“Mama, I always see you there… “(Sharon Olds)

“I learned from my mother how to…”  (Julia Kasdorf)

“Grandma, come back, I forgot…”  (Carolyn Forché)

“Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world…”  Ted Kooser

“The older I get, the more I see/the power of that young woman, my mother” (Sharon Olds)

“O mother, what have I forgotten?”  (Alan Ginsberg)

• A Mother’s Advice:  Write about the advice you were given by a mother or grandmother.  In the essay, “Advice from My Grandmother,” Alice Hoffman creates an unmistakable portrait of her grandmother, Lillie Lutkin.

Cook badly.  Even if you’re already a bad cook, make it worse.  Trust me, it’s easy.  Throw in anything you want.  Too much salt, too much pepper.  Feed him and see what he says.  A complaint means he’s thinking about himself, and always will.  A compliment means he’ll never make a living.  But a man who says, “Let’s go to a restaurant,” now he’s a real man.  Order expensive and see what he’s got to say then.

(In Family:  American Writers Remember Their Own, 1996).

• Write an unsent letter that expresses all you feel—loving and/or conflicted:  Wallace Stegner, in “Letter, Much Too Late,” wrote to his dead mother:

Mom, listen.

In three months I will be eighty years old, thirty years older than you were when you died…

… as I sit here at the desk, trying to tell you something fifty-five years too late, I have a clear mental image of your pursed lips and your crinkling eyes, and I know that nothing I can say will persuade you that I was ever less than you though me.  Your kind of love, once given, is never lost…When I have been less than myself, you make me ashamed even as you forgive me.  You’re a good . . . boy . . . Wallace…

(From:  Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West, 1992)

As we honor our mothers this Sunday, let mothers be your inspiration for writing.   To every mother who reads this post,  Happy Mother’s Day.

My adventure began as soon as I arrived at the San  Diego airport on Friday morning.  I headed for the kiosk to finish the check-in process but was immediately stopped by an agent.

“Where are you headed?”

“Toronto,” I cheerily replied.

“You need to go over there,” she said, pointing to a long line of passengers waiting to have their check-in completed by the three agents on duty.  “We have delays in Chicago.”

“Oh, Oh,” I thought.  I had only 45 minutes in O’Hare to disembark and gallop to a different concourse to make my connecting flight to Toronto.

I dutifully took my place in line and did what I don’t do very well.  I waited, inching my bags and myself forward as the minutes ticked slowly by.

What you do with time

is what a grandmother clock

does with it: strike twelve

and take its time doing it.

You’re the clock: time passes,

you remain. And wait.

(From:  “Mother,” by Kurt Brown)

I was finally summoned to an agent’s desk.  He reviewed my ticket and murmured, “Oh dear, a change in Chicago.”  I didn’t like the sound of that.  “Let me see if I can get you on a later flight to Toronto,” he said.  “We aren’t sure when the flight to Chicago from San Diego is actually going to arrive.”

His hands flew over the keyboard as he looked at flight schedules and seat availability while I gripped the strap of my handbag, knuckles turning white, a sure sign of my rising anxiety.  “All set,” he said, “I’ve got you re-ticketed.  It’ll be a little longer day for you, but you and your luggage will get  to Toronto together.”

Tickets in hand, I breathed relief and made my way to the gate. As my flight to O’Hare was delayed twice more, I checked my new tickets, grateful that the agent had re-ticketed me for a later flight.   My gratitude didn’t last.

It is possible that things will not get better

than they are now, or have been known to be.

It is possible that we are past the middle now.

It is possible that we have crossed the great water

without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.

Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now

we are being given tickets, and they are not

tickets to the show we had been thinking of…

(From Riveted, by Robyn Sarah)

Hours later, I sat in Chicago’s O’Hare, among the other weary and frustrated travelers who were waiting for the Toronto flight, having already endured one gate change and five different posted departure times, each becoming later and later.  We finally departed near midnight and touched down in Toronto sometime after 2 a.m., only to have to stand in a long line of international travelers waiting, as we were, to go through Canadian customs.  I still had to claim my luggage and find a taxi.  I glanced at the clock in the customs hall.  3 a.m.  I was  frantic with fatigue, I began to feel as if I would never get to my daughter’s apartment.  It was not definitely the trip I envisioned when I first  booked my tickets months before.

Life is like that sometimes, isn’t it?  We’re dealt a wild card, a blow, given news we didn’t expect and never asked for, and we look at the tickets in our hands and protest, “but this is not the life I wanted.”  Those moments bring us to our knees.  We’re forced to re-consider, re-evaluate, take the tickets we’ve been given and make the best of the journey we’re on.

I arrived at my daughter’s apartment at 3:45 a.m. and fell into bed.  But just three later, I heard my granddaughter’s voice, and I couldn’t sleep another minute. I got out of bed and peeked around the corner of the kitchen door.  “Good morning, Flora,” I said.  Every tedious hour of waiting vanished in the moment she looked up and smiled at me.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

(From “The Four Quartets,” by T.S. Eliot)

The faith and the love and the hope are … in the waiting.  These words make me reconsider why life sometimes challenges us, throws us a curve we didn’t expect.    I am still learning, even after all these years, to accept what I cannot control, to let things unfold as they will, even if it’s as simple as waiting, weary and irritable, for a delayed flight.

This week, write about a time you’ve been given tickets to a life you didn’t expect, didn’t wish for.  What was the event?  What helped you cope with your new set of circumstances?  What did you discover along the way?

Given my age and stage in life, I’m sure to be in the beginner class indefinitely, but mastery isn’t the reason I drum.  I love music and rhythm.  I drum because it’s joyous activity.  I drum because drumming in a community of other drummers is exhilarating. Drumming, dancing–anything to do with music–makes me feel better.  The cares of the day disappear. Drumming has been one of the best medicines for my heart—emotionally and physically—since I began playing.

It’s no surprise.  Music has a long history in medicine and healing. The ancient Greeks believed music could heal the body and the soul. Ancient Egyptians and Native Americans used singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals. Even the U.S. Veterans Administration incorporated music an adjunct therapy for shell-shocked soldiers after World War II. Today, music therapy is widely used in hospitals and cancer centers to promote healing and enhance the quality of patients’ lives. Take a look at this week’s Coping with Cancer online newsletter, and you’ll find a number of tips for making music your therapy from Dr. Suzanne Hanser, music therapist.

“The power of music to integrate and cure is quite fundamental,” Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author of Awakenings wrote. “It is the profoundest non-chemical medication.” In a number of scientific studies, music has helped reduce stress, aid relaxation and alleviate depression.  Together with anti-nausea drugs, music can help to ease nausea and vomiting accompanying chemotherapy. It relieves short-term pain and decreases the need for pain medication. It’s effective in diminishing pre-surgical anxiety and beneficial for patients with high blood pressure.  Music even plays a role in improving troubled teens’ self-esteem and academic performance.

The role of music in memory is also a powerful one. We associate songs and other musical pieces with people, places and emotions  we’ve experienced in the past. In a number of studies, researchers have demonstrated that hearing music associated with past event from a person’s life evokes memories of that experience.  Not only does music trigger life stories, but it has also can improve memory functioning and even face-name recognition among Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

My mother died from Alzheimer’s in 2000, and during my last visit with her, music worked its magic.  I arrived at the Alzheimer’s residence that became her home for the final years of her life, shocked to observe the degree of  physical and mental deterioration in the month since I’d seen her last.  She was completely unresponsive to me, no longer able to walk, and sat motionless in a wheelchair, head bobbing listlessly on her chest. I tried without success to elicit a reaction from her and finally, decided to take her outside into the garden.     I pushed her chair through the double doors and positioned her next to a Bougainvillea, furious with red blooms.  I hoped for a glimmer of life, some sign of my mother in her motionless body,  but she was completely unaware that the scenery had changed.  At a loss, I took her hand and began singing, an old song from the 1940’s, one she had often sung to me as a child:  “Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you,” I began, struggling to remember the lyrics.  As I sang, I saw her slowly raise her head and fix her gaze on my face.  With considerable effort, she smiled and haltingly began to speak. “Why,” she struggled for words, “it’s Sharon!”  She smiled contentedly and closed her eyes.  “I’m happy,” she said.  It was all I could do to not burst into tears.

Music plays a powerful role in our lives.  Why not write about the role it’s had in yours?  Perhaps music has been important in your healing or that of a loved one.  Music is a great trigger for our memories and the stories or poems that emanate from them.  Even the song “Happy Birthday,”  can prompt a wealth of memories.  I know.  I’ve had my writing groups sing “Happy Birthday” in laughing unison before they begin writing–and the wealth of stories that result surprises everyone.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• Perhaps there was some particular music that helped you through cancer treatment or another difficult time.  Listen to it again, closing your eyes, and try to remember that time and how the music made you feel.

• Recall a lullaby from childhood, a favorite song, a bit of classical music, or even the somewhat dissonant music from your high school band. What memories or stories does the music trigger?

• Take any favorite recording, classical, jazz, new age, or pop, and listen to it.  Keep your notebook nearby. As you listen, capture the random thoughts and associations that come to mind. Once the recording ends, open your notebook and begin free writing.  Do this for five minutes.  When you finish, re-read what you’ve written and underline the sentence that has the most power for you.  Use that sentence to begin writing again on a fresh page. Set the timer for 15 minutes and see where it takes you.

“If music be the food of love…” Shakespeare wrote.  Imagine what the bard might have penned if he’d known about music’s power to heal!