Writing Through Cancer

Edith Piaf had none.

Frank Sinatra admitted to a few.

And in The Remains of the Day, the dutiful manservant, Stevens, is haunted by them.

(From:  “Regret Haunts Baby Boomers,” by David Graham, Toronto Star, December 1, 2007)

Regret.  How many times have you looked back over your life and said, “if only I’d …?” I know I have, unwittingly catching myself in the midst of a conversation and musing, “If only we’d…”  We all do it from time to time, and we’ve likely been told to “get over it” by loved ones or well-meaning friends.  But here’s the thing:  Regret, researchers suggest, is second only to love in the emotions we most often feel and reference.

Some, like psychologist Neal Roese, author of If Only:  How to Turn Regret Into Opportunity, argues it’s better to embrace our regrets and use them to move on as smarter people.  Regret, he states, serves a necessary psychological purpose:  helping us to recognize opportunities for change and growth, even hope for a better future.  Like Terry Malloy, Marlon Brando’s character in On the Waterfront, regret drives us to work for change.  According to Roese, “Regret pushes us forward…helping us make better choices in the future.  It stimulates growth.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  But why does regret come to haunt us if our future has suddenly been cut short, like so many men and women who face aggressive cancer diagnoses and other debilitating illnesses or circumstances?  I often hear regrets voiced in our writing groups, and I remember how often regret came up in my father’s conversations after a diagnosis of Stage IV lung cancer.  Given just three months to live, he began looking back over his life, often ending a memory with “I just wish I’d gone ahead and…when I had the chance,” or “if only I hadn’t…”  As sad as those conversations sometimes were, I had a rare glimpse into the life and feelings of my father.

I remember Varda, a member of my first writing group for cancer survivors.  She ultimately lost her battle with metastatic breast cancer, but for the many months she was part of the group, she was as fearless in her writing as she was in her determination to live as long as she could.  A few months before her death, she wrote about regret, imagining it as a dance partner:

Late in the night I dance with Regret, dipping and gliding through bad choices and unforgiven hurts…we glide past images of my parents …

Regret whispers that some things are no longer possible…my partner leans close to remind me of the time I should have spent as a sister and a mother, and that life is as illusionary as a soap-bubble floating lightly by and then gone…Regret has slipped into my corner and asked my memories to speak…my companion reminds me that those I loved are gone, and that I am dancing with a haunting and relentless suitor.

Before my illness, I viewed my life as a bright meadow rolling endlessly toward distant hills…Although I aged, I still view my future as a meadow without fences.

But when I awoke with cancer, Regret was my first visitor {and} will again be my faithful evening companion.…

(From: “Dancing with Regret, by Varda Nowack Goldstein, in A Healing Journey by Sharon Bray, 2004)

Varda continued to write for as long as she could before the end of her life, and as she did, regret transitioned into a humorous and poignant looking back at her life with all its challenges, foibles and rewards.  In a final poem entitled “Faith,” regret is replaced by acceptance:  “My cancer has challenged my faith,” Varda wrote, “and I have found an incredible well/ I did not know I had…true surrender, enormous peace.”

Varda helped me understand the role regret played in my father’s final months.  His regrets served a purpose, much like they had in Varda’s final months.  He was remembering the whole of his life, who he had been, who he had become, and as he did, he was making peace with the inevitability of death.

But what if we’re given a second chance?  Cancer goes into remission; we recover and move back into life.  What do we do with the opportunity?  Linger in regret or find new meaning in our lives?  “Imagine you wake up with a second chance,” Rita Dove writes in, “Dawn Revisited:”

 Imagine you wake up

with a second chance: The blue jay

hawks his pretty wares

and the oak still stands, spreading

glorious shade. If you don’t look back,

 

the future never happens…

The whole sky is yours

 

to write on, blown open

to a blank page…

(From:  On the Bus with Rosa Parks, 1999)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten second, third, maybe even fourth chances out of serious illness and hardship. Sometimes regret hovered in the shadows, but ultimately, it became the impetus to do things differently, take risks, and re-shape the life I was living.  I never would have begun leading writing groups for cancer survivors if I hadn’t had cancer myself.  Did I regret not doing it sooner?  Of course, but the life I led before cancer continues to inform the life I lead now in valuable ways.  Nothing, as poet Dorianne Laux reminds us, needs to be stored in our lives as regret.
Regret nothing.  Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out
who killed the cook.  Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.

Not the love you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat
to the punch line, the door, or the one who left you …

You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here.
Regret none of it…

(From “Antilamentation,” in The Book of Men, by Dorianne Laux, 2012)

Think about regrets this week, about all the times you’ve said or wondered “if only…”  How have you harnessed those regrets and moved forward differently?  What have you learned?  What has your life taught you about regret?  Write about regret.  Write about “if only.”  See where it takes you.