Remember Love?

One of my favorite poems - and the only one I know by heart:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least:

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee,--and then my state

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

Sonnet 29, William Shakespeare

This weekend I went to the wedding of two exquisite people. I've known him since he was a child, and although I just met her a few years ago, I feel as if she is my sister/grandmother/daughter/friend. They are in love and in health. They can make beautiful plans and unravel tightly wound knots with optimism. They have time. They have the luxury of taking today for granted and concentrating on building their tomorrow on a foundation of great expectations.

It was a joy and a liberation to join in their celebration. Because even those of us who have passports to regularly visit the kingdom of the sick, as Susan Sontag describes it, need to be reminded of how penetrating love can be. Love is the hand that can point us toward a better moment, the arm that can encircle us when we are shrouded in our own misery, and the essence that can metabolize a depleted spirit into something lighter and more buoyant.

L'chaim -- to life!

Finding Connection Within the Whirlwind

I don't know about you, but more and more of the people I know are getting sick.

I have a dear friend who was recently diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Another friend's 65 year old husband is sliding quietly into end stage Alzheimer's. And there are too many women friends who are being treated for breast cancer.

The sadness of it is a weight we all carry, mostly separately, and at special times, together.

I grow more and more aware of how the battering ram of illness smashes down hard on couples and leaves partners flattened and afraid, without instructions for how to use the strength of relationship to build resiliency for facing the trials of illness.

The flattened partners are quickly scooped up by the medical whirlwind, and their own voices are lost in the loudness of clinical talk about diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, prognosis, trials, and options. There is hardly room to breath, let alone time to connect and remember the power of love and shared memories. There is no time to grow into awareness of being a couple, of not really being alone, when isolating words like cancer, stroke, heart attack are surrounding you.

I can remember times when I felt that the world had shrunk to just two points - me and my pain. There was no horizon, no tomorrow. Just this terrible duality of self and hurt. I thought nothing could reach me. Then Richard would come home from work and we'd sit on the couch in silence, leaning against each other. The world would shift, sometimes only for a few minutes. I felt accompanied. That there was a shoulder next to mine helping me carry the weight of pain.

There can be so much energy in the couple connection. Even if the relationship has grown dull, illness can sometimes compel alliance. When faced with a frightening diagnosis or mysterious symptoms, be silent for a moment and look into each others' eyes. Hold hands. Maintain contact within the whirlwind. Use each other as anchor points.

Have you been able to find moments of connection with your partner? How do you do it?

WHAT BRAIN SCANS CAN TELL US ABOUT MARRIAGE

From the June 4, 2010 New York Times, by Tara Parker-Pope. The article doesn't look at marriages in which one (or both) partner has an illness, but it's still food for thought.

WHAT BRAIN SCANS CAN TELL US ABOUT MARRIAGE
"....academic researchers have become increasingly fascinated with the inner workings of long-married couples, subjecting them to a battery of laboratory tests and even brain scans to unravel the mystery of lasting love.

Bianca Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studies the neuroscience of relationships and began a search for long-married couples who were still madly in love. Through a phone survey, she collected data on 274 men and women in committed relationships, and used relationship scales to measure marital happiness and passionate love.

Dr. Acevedo expected to find only a small percentage of long-married couples still passionately in love. To her surprise, about 40 percent of them continued to register high on the romance scale. The remaining 60 percent weren’t necessarily unhappy. Many had high levels of relationship satisfaction and were still in love, just not so intensely.

In a separate study, 17 men and women who were passionately in love agreed to undergo scans to determine what lasting romantic love looks like in the brain. The subjects, who had been married an average of about 21 years, viewed a picture of their spouse. As a control, they also viewed photos of two friends.

Compared with the reaction when looking at others, seeing the spouse activated parts of the brain associated with romantic love, much as it did when couples who had just fallen in love took the same test. But in the older couples, researchers spotted something extra: parts of the brain associated with deep attachment were also activated, suggesting that contentment in marriage and passion in marriage aren’t mutually exclusive.

“They have the feelings of euphoria, but also the feelings of calm and security that we feel when we’re attached to somebody,” Dr. Acevedo said. “I think it’s wonderful news.”

So how do these older couples keep the fires burning? Beyond the brain scans, it was clear that these couples remained active in each other’s lives.

“They were still very much in love and engaged in the relationship,” Dr. Acevedo said. “That’s something that seems different from the Gores, who said they had grown apart.”

Indeed, if there is a lesson from the Gore breakup, it’s that with marriage, you’re never done working on it.

Heroism Doesn't Always Make it to the 6:00pm News

How's this for heroism?

My father died six months ago. Since then my mother has been living alone in their apartment and, until recently, has been enjoying the solitude. Recently she began having panic attacks and crying to me on the phone that she just can't stand being alone any more.

Now this may be a form of grief reaction or a realization of the great existential aloneness of being mortal. Whatever the roots, she simply does not want to live alone. She wants to move into assisted living.

The tangle is that my mother's neediness and my pain condition are wired into each other. The needier she is, the more ripples and burps I feel. Recently my pain has shot up from ripples to rip tides.

Richard and I have tickets to fly today to visit her and begin the process of finding suitable assisted living facilities. I am not in great shape, but she can't bear any postponement. Normally I would grit my teeth (after taking a double dose of pain meds) and soldier through.

But that's not heroism. That's stupidity. Here's the heroism.

Richard offered to go visit her solo, see assisted living facilities with her, and stay until she's feeling less panicky and more like there's a plan in place. She's not his mother, and while he loves her, he doesn't always like her. But he is willing to do this for her and for me.

To me, that's heroism.... and love.

Do you have stories of heroism you'd like to share?

Birthday Celebration

We celebrated Richard's birthday this weekend. It was one of those decade birthdays that end in a zero. The immediate family consisting of brothers, in-laws, and cousins spent the weekend together in a rented house near Pt. Reyes National Seashore, about an hour and a half north of San Francisco.

The house was a rustic palace with multi-tiered terraces and giant windows overlooking the beautiful nothingness of sky, clouds, trees, and marshland. The wood stove kept us warm and we all pooled our culinary talents and kept ourselves very well fed. On Saturday Richard and I did a 10 mile hike through oceans of spring wildflowers. We couldn't take a step without stomping on some buttercups or wild irises.

For me, the greatest joy was that I could give Richard a pure gift of this glorious weekend, during which he could be the center, not my illness or my health.

Happy birthday sweetie!

Two Heart That Beat As One...Really!

From MSNBC, an article by health editor Linda Dahlstrom

Never to part: Devoted couples share life, death

"Research shows that in some cases, one person’s heartbeat can affect, even regulate, another’s, possibly acting as a type of life support.

In one such study, Rollin McCraty, research director at the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, Calif., looked at what happened to six longtime couples' hearts while they slept. Heart-rate monitors revealed that during the night, as the couple slept beside each other, their heart rhythms fell into sync, rising and falling at the same time. When the printouts of their EKGs were placed on top of each other, they looked virtually the same.

“When people are in a relationship for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, they create sort of a co-energetic resonance with each other,” says Lipsenthal, who is the past director of Dr. Dean Ornish’s Preventative Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, Calif. “A simple analogy is two tuning forks, put next to each other. They create a co-resonant pitch. What happens when two people sleep together for 50 years? What happens when one goes away?”

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A Story:

I remember one week, early on, when I was at the height of my pain condition, Richard, my sweetie, developed a raging cold. I was feeling so fragile that the thought of contracting his cold on top of bearing my rampant pain was intolerable. We decided to keep at least 10 feet and preferably a closed door between us.

Prior to this moment, his touch was my anchor. When he put his cool hand on my forehead, the swirling pain and fear quieted. When I leaned up against him, I felt as if the universe were, maybe, on my side, at least for a moment.

We stayed apart for a day and a half. During that time, my pain spiraled out of control. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even eat the soft pears and oatmeal that had become my entire diet. I wanted his comfort, but dreaded the contagion.

As I lay weeping in the living room, Richard phoned his brother for support. Ten minutes later, Richard burst into the room and wrapped his arms around me. As he held me and stroked my hair, I felt the pain recede. I asked him what his brother said. He answered, " F--- the f---ing cold. Get in there and hug her."

Now, that better times are more normal, this has remained one of our mantras.

Love and Healing

A while ago I interviewed a Jungian analyst about the topic of couples and illness. He bypassed practical advice and moved quickly to the realm of the transcendent. He talked about love. Not specifically romantic or sexual love but love as a creative act -- one that opens up the possibility of bringing new forms and new potential into being. "Love brings to being that which is not -- love creates," he said, and can therefore contribute in untold ways to healing.

Here is a surprising story about love. Tell me if you don't feel a sense of possibility after watching this.

Vic and Toni: A Story About Cancer and Love

Here's a story from Freep (the Detroit Free Press online) about a couple who has learned to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses before and during illness.

"After 22 years of marriage, cancer has provided Vic and Toni Mounts an unlikely new chapter that Toni calls 'our new normal.' Cancer, and a love story."

The title of the story: Cancer took his voice, but couple communicates better than ever

I couldn't help but read it and smile, ...initially. Then I began to wonder -- where are the sharp edges? the darkness? the petty aggravations?

The silent moments create the rhythm in the music. The empty spaces give the sculpture depth and movement. The struggles are the crucible in which the relationship can strengthen its bonds.

Am I being too cynical? Maybe Vic and Toni are one of the lucky couples who fit together from the start and let true love guide them the rest of the way.

After Thanksgiving Blues

I can’t help it. Whether it’s tryptophan withdrawal or disgust at eating massive quantities of foods I never eat during the year, I am suffering from post Thanksgiving blues. I wander around the house. Sit down for a few minutes. Get up. Wander a bit. Start a book. Put it down. It’s like I’ve been demagnetized and can’t lock onto anything.

Dishes pile up. Laundry piles up. Richard keeps asking me, “What’s your mood?” “What’s on your mind?” “Are you ok?” My mood is flat; my mind is floating; and yeah, I’m ok, in the global sense. That is, I have nothing to be particularly unhappy about.

This Thanksgiving, we did what we always do – gather with the friends who have become family. Some we see regularly; others once a year around the Thanksgiving table. We talk about life events, travel, favorite books and movies, political opinions, and lawyer jokes. Nothing new. Good friends and good times – a regular Hallmark card.

There’s such purpose in Thanksgiving. In the food, the table, the wines, the companionship. And sometime, during the drive home late Thursday night, the purpose dissipates. The focus shifts to email and meetings and snow tires and telemarketers. The ordinary moves back in.

Richard sees me staring at nothing. He says, “Do you know that when I ask you what your mood is or if you’re ok or just say ‘Hi babe’– that I’m stroking you with words? I’m making contact.” I didn’t know that. I feel better.