Living Inside Helplessness

I'm 20 minutes outside NYC.
My friends in the area and I are all sharing
maps and estimates of bad things.

Some events of my life
are coming back to me in this time
with something to give you.
I may have told you some of what happened
but everything has a new teaching for me today.

When I was 5, my parents sat me down
to tell my Mom had cancer and the doctors
told her she had six months to live.
That took them a while to explain it to me.
I remember being in a breathless panic at night
wondering if this would be the night she would die.
Lot of nightmares and hard to sleep.
I vividly remember not liking being in school
because I felt my Mom needed me.
 
This is where the cracks
in reassurances started.
You can't tell me
she's going to die
AND
Everything's going to be all right.
I mean, they did tell me both for some reason.
But their credibility wasn’t super high with me.

In second grade, I was hit by a car
and they told me
I might not walk again.
Took a year of my life - hospital, full body cast, learning to walk.
Staring at the tiles in the hospital ceiling.
 
If I'm picking life defining moments,
those are top contenders.
Big theme of moving
forward into chaos.
 
My mom died when I was 15
and I ended up being interested in Hospice.
They had these death workshops
where you drew what death looks like to you.
Some guy drew a stack of cash and dollar signs.
 
We were all unanimous in wtf
and as nicely as we could,
we asked him wtf.
 
He shrugged his shoulders and said:
"My family owns a funeral home."
 
I was there trying to work through agony.
Vincent Van Death was there for sales training.
 
When you're looking after a lot of people,
a lot of problems become your problems.
What hurts you, hurts me.
That expands what I see dramatically.
 
When you're just trying to get by,
all you do is get by.
 
I had doctors sit me down
and explain what a body cast was.
They wrapped me like a mummy.
And then I couldn't sit up for months.
There was no unknowns.
Just if I'd walk again.
 
Doctors watched cancer
kill my Mom in slow motion
across x rays and charts.
They tried things and
she got some extra years.
 
But at some point, we had to hang out with bad news.
Medical expertise can only do so much.
And I had to be OK with a degree of helplessness.
What I learned is that helplessness is always there -with everyone.
Sometimes it's revealed. When bad moments pile on relentlessly.
And all we can do is watch and do what we can to make people more comfortable.

In helplessness you learn the value
of helping someone.
 
Kindness is a luxury.
When someone gives it to you
at a difficult time,
you never forget it.
 
Sometimes you're visiting someone in the hospital
and they're in a coma.
Maybe you're both in a coma
and walking through the fog outside
while they fight for their life inside.
But you offer what you have
because that's all you have to offer.
 
Dogs get it.
They know when you need support
and they just show up.
They don't watch webinars
or take courses but they get it.
So it's not some ethereal wisdom.
 
When I'd look at my Mom,
it was always in the back of my mind.
Is tonight the last night?
 
Everything I do has roots in that question.
Not from a place of scarcity but appreciation.
It's also rooted in core directness.
Ask the real question.
The one you're afraid to ask yourself.
 
You don't need a formula or recipe for that.
You need
"take a deep breath"
level courage.
 
That's the difference between selling and helping.
The two have nothing to do with each other.
Sometimes the most helpful thing
I can do is not say anything
and leave the room.
Ahh...but you don't make a sale that way, do you?
There's your conflict of interest.
 
So some people want to help - as long as there's
a sale in their ratio of content and "help."
And then they wonder
what's happening to their life.
 
Ask the real question.
And take a deep breath for the answer.

Whatever happens,
I don't need promises
or reassurances.
I'm moving forward
because I still can.
 
 Robert