In college, I’d felt overwhelmed by class work, grumbling I’d never get through finals without my brain imploding. I trudged uphill and encountered a casual friend. We spoke for several minutes, laughing. Then she mentioned she was battling a brain tumor.
Stunned, I blinked at her, unsure if I heard correctly. Her red hair caught the sun. She shaded her eyes and grinned widely at me, as though she’d just joked about a boyfriend. It wasn’t that she was cavalier or in denial… she chose not to be gloomy or self-pitying. She expressed relief that her cancer treatment wouldn’t interfere with graduation.
I choked out a clumsy consolation, and prayed that she’d have a good prognosis.
We parted ways, and later, I lingered outside the door of a college professor, an endearing chain-smoker who favored tweed jackets, whose desk was piled high with messy textbooks and tests to grade. We talked about problems, and I mentioned this friend who remained cheerful, despite her enormous physical challenge, a brain tumor, of all things.
The professor gazed at me with solemn gypsy eyes, her jittery hands a contrast to her slow, measured words. “Everyone has problems. It’s how you cope that matters.”
Right. It’s how you cope.
Psychological resilence. That’s the stuff of stout-hearted people who meet life’s setbacks head-on, no whining, no complaints. They keep plugging, even as they face failure… or death.
Given how so many others really suffer, surely I can forge ahead and meet my goals, (fiction, others), while continuing to encourage my kids, deepen the bonds of my marriage, honor my extended family, and be a good, dependable friend.
Wilma Rudolph: “My doctor told me I’d never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.”
