7.18.06, Letter from an Anonymous Father

[note from 7.19.06: Franky Scale, a good 7, I'm not going to post today since there was a substantial post put up late yesterday. Thanks to everyone who posted in support during the last day, more later.

Today I was at the cancer center/hospital for the multiple-pass CT scans, to create images for my restaging which happens tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., till who knows when. I've had four-hour meetings with Dr. Whiting before. Cross your fingers for good results tomorrow, more tumor shrinkage, less cancer, leading to more time. Till then I'm going to be reading Adorno's Minima Moralia, subtitle of which is key, Reflections from Damaged Life.]

“Letter from an Anonymous Father”

[N.B., this is another one of those pour-yourself-a-drink and then-sit-down-to-read kind of posts. It’s as serious as anything posted yet and I will warn some of you that it might be troubling as regards family relationships. For those, like the words Dante read above the Gates of Hell . . .]

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Part 1. Epigraph in Parable

One passage I recall from the Bible is in the book of John, chapter 8. Three verses should give convey the gist:

6. This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

7. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

8. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

Curious little passage.

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Part 2. A Father’s Letter

Yesterday I received a letter from my dad, here’s the punch line: Because I am a sinner, God has cursed me to die young from pancreatic cancer. How’s that for a nice Howd’ya Do at the end of your day? (Almost makes me want to change my mailbox key.) But the letter was written, I should add, “with great love and anticipation.”

Here is the reasoning. Specifically, my father says that because “not only did I deny the existence of Christ but I also overlooked The Word of Wisdom” (emphasis in original; and the Word of Wisdom is Mormon-speak, as he explains, specifically meaning that I drank alcohol). (My apologies — I guess you should put down that drink now.) Odd choice of words, don’t you think, that I somehow “overlooked” this commandment of the Word of Wisdom; the upshot is that I am guilty of a denial and an overlooking, and either way God has chosen to punish me by giving me pancreatic cancer, the terminal kind. As for the validity of the first claim, who knows but that maybe some of my Christian readers will agree with my father, this is their choice; as for the second and clearly more scientific claim, we all know that most people who drink get pancreatic cancer at my age (38 yrs), right, so how can I blame him? Don’t most of your friends around my age have it? And aren’t most of your friends around my age going to die from it? It is odd that my oncologist a few other doctors think my case is rare. Oh well, for any who wondered at why it's so common with 38-year old men, now you have an explanation and you can stop your wondering. Ask and it shall be given to you.

Of course this letter, in all its embarrassing harshness, is personal, however let me give two reasons I think it’s actually appropriate to share this here. First, some of my closest friends and loved ones, family included, read this regularly. All of you comprise my greatest support in this experience, you’ve fully “been there” for me, in action, and it keeps me going. Second, there might be someone else out there who goes through rough times with a parent while they are suffering from a terminal illness and perhaps this will be of some comfort, make you laugh, or have a good cry. While it’s not a comfortable little story, it’s real, it’s what some people do to other people in their grief. It’s a demonstration of how some people cope with pain and death, or rather, how they fail to cope. Whatever it takes.

I will note, too, that this patriarchal missive also expresses love and concern for me and, to balance out my curse, it even offers me the solution to all my problems. A cure. According to my father, I will be cured if I work at being a good Mormon again. Specifically, if I let the Mormon savior back in my life, immediately, then the “miracle” will come. Here: “It is imperative Scott that you let the SAVIOR back in to your life as soon as possible” so that the miracle can happen (emphasis in original). A comforting thought in my time of grief, it’s already waiting for me. In a nutshell, it’s all spelled out, in the form of a curse and a claim, or perhaps I should say a promise, so that even I couldn't overlook it.

Granted there are small flaws in the letter’s logic. I’ll spare you the examples. It does make you wonder, though. What about all the innocent people in the world who have ever suffered or suffer now? Are they all suffering because they’re sinners (too)? Forget people with terminal illness, what about victims of genocide? Holocaust, East Timor, Rwanda . . .? Another example would be the 9/11 victims — were they all wicked? I know how that hit home for many of us. But, OK, let’s talk about terminal illness, since that’s why we’re here after all: how do I explain the righteous people who get cancer? And what about people who get cancer without ever smoking or drinking? Mm, this gets complicated. (You can all see where the logic leads, the reductio ad absurdum, and in fact every point along the way, is truly absurd.)

The converse is also explicitly spelled out in the letter: in other words, the righteous — don’t know whether you can be righteous if you’re not Mormon, you’d have to ask my father — are blessed accordingly. Just as I am cursed to die of pancreatic cancer at 38 for my sins, the righteous, he offers himself as the example, are blessed with miracles and “[given] a whole new world,” etc. If you are righteous, whatever it is that you dream for, it will be yours, the letter says. A very simple, though not particularly kind, logic.

Despite having felt “past this” and “past him” for years now, I was somewhat surprised when I sat down and read the letter. And I think there might be some healing power in the mysterious blog, or rather in a community of real support, so this is my post for the day.

Surely there are other lessons to learn from this, in time, but I think I have learned the Big Lesson. Be very, very careful what you name your blog: Remember that line from the last stanza of Dylan Thomas’s poem, where the speaker addresses his father and says, “Curse, bless me now. . .”?! What strikes me most now is — since God has already struck me with pancreatic cancer, that is — the power of literary allusion!

When fictions stranger than truth become the truth, how strange.

P.S., Franky Scale: 7. Despite or because.