The lesson from the hosptial bed next to me - flat or full?

I just finished chemo cycle #3, it was went smooth, without hiccup.  I'm home and on my third day of resting I start to rebound.  I'm ready to tell you about chemo cycle #2, not about the chemo but what happened while I was in the hospital that time.

Going up to the ninth floor I had a piece of paper from admitting with a room number written on it, but that was not the room the nurses directed me to.  For chemo #2 I was placed in a double room, my neighbor was already there when I arrived.  When you spend three days in a hospital room with someone you can't help but know a lot about their current situation.  Of course she had cancer, we all do on the ninth floor.  But she was so sick; in bed all of the time, sleepy, in pain, vomiting.  She could not eat, all her nutrition came from an iv bag.  And she was so like me in so many ways...similar age, married for 20+ years, two children pre-teen age.  The nursing staff was preparing her to go home for hospice care.  This lovely woman is not going to see Christmas.  She had numerous visitors who all seemed to love her a lot.  Her husband sat and talked quietly with her.  And so many health care professionals came to attend to her needs.  And yet, the thing I noticed the most was that she seemed emptied out.  Flat. Her eyes did not light up when I asked about her kids.  Her eyes did not light up when her husband came in the room.  Not angry, not sad, not crying.  Quiet and empty.  And that scared me.

I came home and kept thinking about what I had seen in the other bed.  Was her situation a parallel to my life, just on a different level?  Would that be me one day?  Would I become emptied out?  Would my love for life be gone, there be no joy in the everyday gifts?  It made me very angry with God; why had he let me be in that room, why did I have to see that?  Why did I have to look in that mirror?  The woman in the other bed...would that be me? 

Day and night I thought about it. It really unbalanced me.  I didn't want to end like that.  The life all gone before the life ended.  Does it become something you have no control over?  Is there a point when you quit caring and become just am emptied out shell?   Really God! was it necessary for me to see that?

I was still struggling with everything when one morning I was talking with someone at work.  It started with regular business conversation but moved to my trip to Haiti.  I said "going to Haiti fills me up".  And this sparked a conversation that closed the loop on my hospital lesson.  Because it was a lesson, one I am now grateful for. 

So often we are told to seek happiness;  do what makes you happy, find what makes you happy, be with who makes you happy.  So many things make me happy everyday, I'm naturally a happy person.  But what came up in this conversation I was having at work was (and I paraphrase here your words Randy), "it's not happiness we seek.  What we seek is purpose." 

The ah hah moment!  When we strive to live by our values and act on who we were meant we will live with purpose.  Do what we were meant to do.  Each of us was given our own unique set of talents and gifts.  Use them.  Please understand, that as I write I am talking to myself...I am not telling you what to do, I am telling you what I am feeling.  We don't need to be like someone else, in fact we should not!  Be who God destined us to be and take joy in being that person.  I so admire those really smart people who work in labs and figure things out, and at times I think I should study science, to be more like them.  But then I remember that's not my talent and it's okay I don't.  People say to me...I wish I was more like you, always optimistic and seeing the sunny side.  It's just how I am programmed.  Others are programed differently; some more cautious, slow to react, quick to anger.  We need all types of people in our world, it would be so unbalanced if not. So take delight in how you were made.  Your unique self is awesome.  Seek to understand you internal values and how they will drive your decisions and actions.  Go for your destiny.  Be who God made you to be.  Again it was a business meeting that brought this to me, funny how life lessons get put into business settings.  The presenter, Simon, was advising us to identify our core values, because whether we like it or not, our core values will drive all of our decisions, in personal life but also in business.  We were given a long list of values to help us get started thinking.  My top of the list, hands down, is "to help people".  When I do things that fulfill this mission I feel filled up.  When I love on my family I feel filled up.  And I'm not sure what value it would be labeled as, but I love being outside. 


Flat vs. empty.  Can I be filled up to my last breath?  Yes, I think it will always be a choice I can make.  I worry in writing this that if you, or someone you know, is struggling to feel filled with purpose that my words will make you feel you are doing something wrong.  Please don't.  First of all I may be wrong.  Second of all you are not like me, I only write about my life.   I would never want someone reading to feel they should be like me.  I want you to feel inspired to be yourself, to be all you all the time, to love being you, to take joy in it.  And to feel filled up by it. 

Dear woman in the bed next to me; thank you for being a part of my lesson, thank you for being an example to get me thinking and acting upon those thoughts.  I have spent time remembering friends who have passed away from cancer that shared with me their thoughts in those last months; Bernie Gray, Grant in Montreal and Joyce Olsen.  They did not die flat.  Their last days were full of their spirit, them being them. 

And there is my lesson.  I realize I want to live full.  I want to be full right to the last breath.  Living full is a choice.  I don't think full means full of energy, movement or any particular activity.  It's just how you are.  It's how I can be and this gives me hope, peace and joy. 

God Bless
much love
Teresa