Writing Through Cancer

In Worcester, Massachusetts,

I went with Aunt Consuelo

to keep her dentist’s appointment

and sat and waited for her

in the dentist’s waiting room.

 

(From “In the Waiting Room,” by Elizabeth Bishop The Complete Poems 1927-1979)

 I spent the better part of Tuesday in the outpatient waiting room this week,  while my husband, prepped and ready, waited behind closed doors, in a curtained cubicle outside the operating room.  We were there for a minor surgical procedure on his left hand.  We had just arrived at the check-in desk, when a nurse took him in for the pre-surgical preparations.  “Great,” I thought, “this is going to be quick.”  It wasn’t.  An hour passed, then two, and just as the hands on the clock moved toward a third hour spent in the waiting room, the nurse called me in.

“He’s all done,” she said.  John, still in the hospital gown,  held up a bandaged hand. “But first, you need to go down to pharmacy and get his prescription for pain medication.  We’ve already called it in.  It should be waiting for you.  We’ll get him dressed, and as soon as you have get the pills, just bring your car around to the entrance to Building C, and we’ll bring him out.”

I gave my husband a kiss.  “I’ll see you soon,” I said and left to get his medication.

I took the elevator down to the first floor, found the pharmacy and took my place in a long line of people, all waiting to have their prescriptions processed.  When my turn came, I presented the paperwork to the pharmacy associate.  She entered the information into the computer and politely smiled.   “It hasn’t been filled yet.  It will take about thirty minutes.   Have a seat and we’ll call you when it’s ready.”

I obediently sat down, foot twitching, and waited.  Meanwhile, upstairs, my husband was now waiting on me, dressed and ready to go home, but unable to do anything until I had gotten the medication and  parked at the entrance to the surgical wing.  An hour later, we were finally on our way.

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 From The Plural of Happiness: Selected Poems of Herman de Coninck, 2006

Waiting.  We do a lot of it, and we’ve all been doing for a very long time.  Remember how eagerly you waited on Christmas eve, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa?  Or that first crush you had on a boy or girl, waiting and hoping they might notice you?  As a young, expectant mother, I waited for my overdue daughter to be born, the one who, ironically, continues to keep me waiting even now.

Waiting dominates our daily lives.  We wait in lines for tickets or to get through security at the airport.  We wait to be served in restaurants or for a train in the subway station.  We wait for calls or letters from loved ones, for acceptances to schools, or the results of medical tests.  We wait in doctors’ waiting rooms for an appointment that was scheduled an hour earlier, thumbing impatiently through outdated magazines and checking the clock a dozen times.

We wait with hope; we wait with dread.  And if you’re anything like me, we wait impatiently, unable to concentrate on much of anything but the waiting

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting

And the letter you wait for won’t come,

And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray

And the letter I wait for won’t come.

 

(From “Caboose Thoughts,” by Carl Sandburg, 1878 – 1967)

No amount of sighing and toe tapping diminishes the waiting.  I’ve learned that it does little good to pace the hallway or sit at the table, foot twitching restlessly, willing something or someone to speed up.  Time—and events—move as they will.  So if we allow impatience to be our master, how much of life do we fail to notice?

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, 1943)

The faith and the love and the hope are … in the waiting.  These words remind me to reconsider why life seems to make us wait.  I am still learning, despite my age, to accept what I cannot control, to let things unfold as they will–even if it’s as simple as waiting for a perpetually tardy adult daughter to meet me at the door and say, “I’m ready.

What do you wait for?   Or do you remember a particular time when your life seemed to be consumed by waiting?  Write about waiting.