Before the novel coronavirus and spread of COVID-19 was this close, when it was still barely at the forefront of America’s attention, just earlier last week, I was caught up in my own intense internal drama. It was about faith, trust, and delusion.
I am on a spiritual journey and am given to imagine my specific journey as akin to deep sea diving. I, like a deep-sea diver who, with no equipment, wants to see how far she can go without an oxygen tank. Leagues down and just when I’m at my limit, I start to question my courage. Voices from my past religious experiences — the ones that have been lingering in the background, waiting for this moment — start whispering in my ear . . . the voices are mocking me freely and I begin to doubt my ability to hold my breath. Panic sets in and I start to swim to the surface frantically, allowing myself to breathe the air and taste its sweet comfort, the sureness of it, the safety of it.
Then Friday, the weight of the nearing pandemic snapped me out of my inner struggle with an internal invader, that mocking voice, to the broader world struggle against an external invader, taunting our very way of life. I thought how, many times, it takes an external invader to highlight our biggest vulnerabilities. For me, it further exposed my desire for security while highlighting the necessity of deepening my faith. How many of us take for granted simple everyday miracles like our breath? If you can meditate for a moment on the miraculous way our body breathes us every single moment, how the simple act of breathing in and out is a gift. We implicitly trust the sureness of it that we don’t spend a moment thinking about it. Is this not a kind of faith? Yet we don’t start to think about our faith in these everyday miracles until we are jolted awake by things that we have no control over, like a pandemic.
As I started to consider these ideas and see this piece potentially developing around the concept of breath, I became aware of a connection that I hadn’t meant to write about initially. But this connection is so undeniable, I can’t ignore it. My dad died of lung cancer on March 21, 2018. Last year, I was shaken by the Facebook reminders that started showing up right before Lent, recent chronicles of his quick decline. If you know anything about lung cancer, you know that no matter how rapid, that decline is not pleasant. My dad’s cancer had traveled to his brain by the time they caught it, so he was doubly hit by constant vomiting and an inability to breathe very well. The panic that must set in when these symptoms start to compound is unimaginable.
Thankfully, my dad was able to access a very pleasant VA unit for palliative care during the last couple of weeks of his life. They were able to buy him about a week free of the most severe symptoms where we were able to share a few happy last memories with him. As he was relieved of his brain swelling, they started radiation to control his lung cancer. This repressed his immune system and as they sent him home, he caught a respiratory bug that caused an immediate decline in his ability to breathe. He went straight back into palliative care for his last couple of days of life.
The only way to ease someone’s distress when they can’t breathe is to put them on anti-psychotics and morphine. My dad quickly surrendered to what was happening to him. He had told me he was ready to go, but my dad was a man who invariably preferred tight control over some personal matters — such as his insistence that he go to the bathroom with no assistance even when he couldn’t hold himself up by the grab bar. So, I was surprised in the complete way that he surrendered toward the end. He had a few moments of agitation, but there was mostly a peaceful and sweet surrender. He couldn’t speak at that point and my siblings and I were concerned about the amount of drugs they were giving him, but I distinctly remember the look he gave us as if to communicate: “What’s the point?” You can struggle all you want against the inevitable, but at some point have to realize, you have no control. There is a freedom to letting go. I sat holding his hand for hours, talking to him and playing him music. His hand was warm and his pulse steady. His body breathed him as long as it could. Until it couldn’t anymore. Even when he stopped breathing, I was amazed at how long I could feel his warmth and feel his pulse. I did not want to let him go and I still have moments that I double over in grief.
The thing you don’t realize when you lose someone are all the moments you live after they are gone that you wish you could share. I wish I could call him right now so I could hear his calming voice of assurance. But what I do remember now is him telling me that he wasn’t worried about me. He told me this a few years ago amidst my mid-life struggles with my career, a second job loss, and a battle with both my faith in myself and my life direction. He said, “Suzanne, of all my kids [he had nine], you are the one I worry about the least.” I really appreciated his faith in me. And as his words come to me, I realize that I must let go of my panic and have faith that I am right where I need to be. I have to embrace his faith in me and turn that everyday miracle into faith in myself — and in us.
We are all right where we need to be even if it feels scary right now. There is a divine mystery unfolding. While we imagine the worst outcomes, we don’t foresee the miracles also at work. It’s a simultaneous process of letting go and knowing that we will all come through this upheaval magnificently changed.
