musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Hope is patience with the lamp lit


Gregory had hope; how nebulous is that? He and his wife are my closest friends, but it was still difficult for me to talk about the changes that were beginning to thicken over them like shadows on a winter’s day -difficult for me, I guess, but perhaps not for them.

“What do you expect us to do?” he asked me one morning when the two of us had met for coffee in a downtown mall. “After so many years, Gloria and I are twins, eh? We’re almost like one organism living in two bodies…”

I nodded, and stared at my coffee on our little table in the Food Court. All around us people were laughing and making plans for their day, sizing up their lives… Of course I suppose taking stock was what we were doing as well.

“Don’t look so sad, G. There’s always hope…” I could feel his eyes caressing my face and trying to reassure me that where I only saw a terrible end, he saw… well, he saw Gloria and that was enough for him.

I took a deep breath and tried to smile. I’d known them as a couple for more than forty years and the two of them were always smiling, always joking with each other, always remembering some adventure they’d had together. Sometimes I envied their intimacy; sometimes, though, I wondered if what I really coveted were the shared memories each could pull off an identical bookshelf on a whim. Their memories always seemed fresh, if scalloped occasionally around the edges.

My own memories, however, were often jagged and torn like a discarded book -seldom the same whenever –if ever- I eventually found them. Unless someone else had been present to correct me, they were more like rough sketches than videos of the event; as believable as a child playing with dolls and creating stories about them. But at any rate, they’re all I have, and I treasure the fraying common thread that seeks to hold them.

Greg had just told me that Gloria had recently been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease; I was certainly more devastated than he seemed to be about the diagnosis. There had recently been a fair amount of slippage in her memories -but since they were mainly of the short-term variety, Greg and I had only nudged each other and winked. We were all getting old, and a certain blurring of memories was an expected thing in our late seventies. But we were both careful not to draw Gloria’s attention to it; we could tell it had been troubling her for some time now.

But, in fact, it bothered me far more than Greg; Gloria was Gloria for him, and still a gift, no mattered how wizened the wrapping. What did bother him though, was my seeming belittling of his hope.

“You’ve got to remember, G, Hope is not necessarily a wish that things could be better, or that maybe a cure will be found before our shared memories completely submerge… I have all those wishes of course, but Hope is more than just a desire for wish fulfillment. It’s being pragmatic in the real world; it’s believing we can live with dignity with what Fate might have in store for us: ‘Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody but unbowed’, as the poet Henley wrote.”

I stared at him as he said that. Surely Hope is the belief that things will improve. It’s what sustains us in times of despair, it’s the clinging to the fragments of the lifeboat in the empty sea… just in case.

“It’s what I’ve heard described as ‘grounded hope’, G,” he continued. “Reality is what it is, even if you may wish it were otherwise… Of course,” and he winked at me, “things may change. I hope they change; I’ll work to change them if I can, but mainly, I have to continue to respect Gloria’s dignity, her belief in her agency. That’s Hope, I think.”

I sighed and pretended I understood, but I suppose my eyes gave me away; Greg knew me too well.”

“Look,” he said, trying to collect his words like we used to do in those long ago weekend nights in the university residence. “Hope is not just wanting a cure, or a treatment, so much as a way of looking at the world as it really is. It’s not giving up, but rather, in a sense, giving ‘in’ -as, say, in moving along with the events.” He smiled enigmatically and glanced at me. “Remember when we went to watch that judo tournament in -what ?- our second or third year, G? You were so amazed at the ease of the throws. You said that it looked like one of them was just waiting for the right movement in the other, and then helping them to the mat.” He chuckled at that. “Softness controls hardness, remember?”

I nodded, at the memory -a pleasant one from our shared youth.

“I’m just moving along with Gloria, now, and she’s trying to move along with me, god bless her. So, we’ll finish the match together as equals.”

That brought tears to my eyes, and I hastily wiped a cheek with my sleeve.

“We do even more things together now; we reminisce about old memories, and remind each other of what we did just the other day. It makes us both think we can travel towards whatever goal presents itself.” He stopped talking for a moment and stared off into the distance of the Food Court and I could see his eyes pause at each table as their occupants joked and gesticulated at each other as if none of them had any problems at the moment. “We all need time out from our worries, G,” he continued after a particularly loud burst of laughter from a nearby table. “It’s what gives us the strength to go on, don’t you think? We try to envision happy endings for ourselves and others, but prepare ourselves for detours along the way…”

He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, still thinking like the old days when he was trying to decide if he wanted to pursue his studies in Philosophy. “Was it Tertullian who once said ‘Hope is patience with the lamp lit’…? Well, that’s what I think it is, anyway, G.”

You know, I think Gregory was right to continue with Philosophy…

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gozzter

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