Tuesday, January 29, 2019

The Cancer, The Chemo, The Chrysalis, and a Bit of O'Henry


The Cancer,
The Chemo, and
The Chrysalis
                  With a Little Bit of O’Henry

It wasn’t emerald green, more a milky wedding mint green, but its faceted shape and closure of gold gave the monarch chrysalis the appearance of a gem. She spied it hanging from the tomato cage she used to support the Cuphea in the flowerbed. A beetle infestation made it necessary to trim the cuphea to a height of only a few inches, so the chrysalis was visible, unlike the majority of them. Most are hidden until the appointed time at which a monarch appears in all its majesty: A Monarch incubated in a jeweled case—how fitting is the name!
Environmental threats have diminished the monarch population in the United States, in particular the indiscriminate spraying of herbicides—weed killers that have destroyed much of the monarch larvae’s primary food—milkweed. Knowing this and encouraging the population in her yard—she planted milkweed and kept the supply going by planting more seeds and always leaving the new plants wherever they sprouted. Abundant flowers of several other varieties contributed to the nourishing nectar for the butterflies as they visited her yard.
Awareness of the cycles and seasons of the plant life around her tendered a deeper consciousness within her of the monarch lifecycle: the butterflies performing their mating dance and ritual; the female monarchs laying eggs on the milkweed, the emergence of thread-sized larvae; the “hungry caterpillar” stage as the larvae feasted on the milkweed, decimating it, stripping it to bare sticks devoid of foliage, all the while plumping their bodies to store the nutrients they would need during their transformation—their metamorphosis from larvae into royalty. Leaves stripped, the chrysalis-ready larvae lumber off and find a twig—or a wire tomato cage—hang upside down, and spin until they’re encased in a jeweled urn.
She knew all the steps of the transformation, yet she continued to be caught in the thrill of observing it. This latest chrysalis was in full view, providing an unusual, yet exciting, opportunity to keep track of the process—to be aware of each phase, to mark the days until the transformation was complete.
Transformations aren’t limited to the life of flora and fauna. Transformations—welcome as well as unwelcome—also are an aspect of the human experience. Sharing those transformations, or at least being aware of them, are yet another part of being human. While she gardened, her heart was troubled by another transformation of which she was aware. Her children’s seventeen-year-old second cousin was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the autumn. Quirky, artistic, zany, wise-beyond-her-years are just a few limited adjectives to describe the cousin’s esoteric personality. She and the cousin had seen each other only once in recent years, but when she last saw the young woman, she had experienced a connection unlike most in the transient nature of relationships in our mobile, fractured society.
Geographic distance meant the connection would be continued only through Facebook, but she watched as the teen experienced some teenage love, teenage angst, and shared her soul as she spent time at school, at camp, and with her family.
Of course, it’s always difficult when someone receives a cancer diagnosis and it’s never what one will imagine will be part of their teenage experience. The honesty the teen expressed about her illness was striking—raw, intense. To see—read those emotions expressed was different from the woman’s previous experience with childhood cancer. When her own daughter was diagnosed and treated in the mid-1980s, such raw, intense observations during the course of a life-threatening illness were limited to the spoken word—in conversations both in person and over the telephone. The urgency of the day-to-day experience didn’t lend itself to letters, and social media did not exist, so rather than a broad swath of emotions and reactions being shared, those emotions and reactions had little to no audience. It was a more introspective time—although the rawness and grief and despair were similar.
What was/is even more different was the cousin’s cancer isn’t rare. Unlike the woman’s daughter, this teen’s medical team had a protocol to follow—one that demonstrated cures. The odds are in her favor—not that those make the disease and its ramifications any less frightening or threatening.
Remission is the trill of the songbird, the first crocus in March, the burst of green in an opening spring leaf. It was a word the woman never heard during her child’s illness. It was a condition never experienced, because her child died.
Carrying the weight of her child’s death made it difficult to cross the threshold of silence toward the teen, who being a family member was aware of that loss. However, the woman’s experience in life as well as on Facebook had taught her an important lesson: When someone reaches out, it is a plea for those who receive that message to take that person’s hand, hold it, grasp it, use it to support, enlighten, soothe, cherish.
Who among us has so little heart that they refuse the hand beseeching one’s grasp—to hold them, to carry them?
So, reach out she did and began a measured dialogue: one that was met with love and gratitude. She sent her teen friend encouragement and flower photos.
When she spied the jewel dangling from the tomato cage, she knew it was ideal: The teen was nearing the end of her chemotherapy and soon would emerge from treatment. Who knew what life would be or become for her once she broke through the confines of that treatment—broke through the chrysalis enfolding her?
The woman believed the timing of the chrysalis appearance was fortuitous. She took a photo and sent it with a message wondering what the amazing girl would show us after she, too, emerged.
Just as she knew that not all cancer patients emerge from treatment, the woman also knew from observing the jeweled cases in her yard that not every chrysalis is successful at incubating a monarch. Disease and insects and other distresses of the natural world mean that some larvae do not complete the transformation—some chrysalises turn dark and wither and yield nothing but dismay.
So, she watched the chrysalis over the next few weeks with increasing hope that this one would transform and become a Monarch. One of those January weeks ushered in an unusual bout of cold weather, including morning freezes. She debated covering the chrysalis with a blanket, much as she had often covered tender plants before a frost. Experience had taught her, however, that often her interference—meddling—had led to less-than-favorable results both in and out of the garden, so she left the chrysalis alone.
When temperatures returned to the winter norms for her Central Florida home, she was relieved to see the chrysalis still dangling from the cage, still green, still in its phase of suspended animation.
She continued to watch and wait. Close-up, she could see the chrysalis begin to darken as the monarch took shape. Hues of orange began to hint their presence. She anticipated the moment of emergence, certain she would be there to observe. She planned to share the experience with the young woman.
One morning she observed the chrysalis from a distance of several feet. It was solid black, opaque. Black as death—black as the death of numerous chrysalises she had mourned in the past. She turned away, feeling despondent, experiencing an unwelcome wave of superstition and dread. What would she now have to share with the young woman? There was no way she would share the blackness—there was no way she would risk unbalancing the fragile health and psyche of the teen.
Knowing she was putting too much of a negative interpretation on the black chrysalis, and the black thoughts that had intruded on her conscious awareness, she made the effort to redirect her thoughts—and failed.
Knowing she would never share the fate of the chrysalis, but at the same time knowing she didn’t want to ignore the end result or even have the young woman think the transformation didn’t happen, she decided on an alternate plan.
In the style of O’Henry’s “The Last Leaf,” she decided to find another spent chrysalis and photograph it. It would be the “last leaf” painted on the windowpane. She already had captured numerous photos of monarchs in their just-emerged state of plumping their wings before taking flight.
There would be no disappointing sharing of a blackened chrysalis pod—she would never engender that sort of despair in someone else. She would keep the loss and mournful fate of the black chrysalis to herself. She would not exactly lie—but she would create an alternate outcome—O’Henry style.
An O’Henry-style outcome would facilitate hope: The leaf stays visible, the young woman survives her pneumonia. The monarch emerges, resplendent, plumps its wings, and flutters off to drink nectar, pollinate flowers, mate, lay eggs: The life cycle would continue. The young woman, too, would emerge from the hospital, her treatment a success, the cancer in remission and her life would continue, changed like that of the caterpillar into a monarch, but now beautiful, alight—aflight and free.
The O’Henry narrative was much more inspiring and soothing—replete with hope and promise.
She turned her eyes and heart away from the once-jeweled, now blackened urn, determined in her resolve to create the happily ever after scenario we all crave.
Several hours later, her workday ended, the woman returned to the garden. She wanted to resist another glance at the chrysalis, but her eyes were drawn to it as if it were the hypnotic sway of a pendulum. She couldn’t see it from where she stood, so she walked closer, expecting to see a blackened remnant on the nearby ground. She did not. Instead, she saw the transparent chrysalis hanging from the tomato cage. Her heart soared as she remembered that at the last phase of metamorphosis, the chrysalis would be clear and unless one were close enough, all that would be visible would be the folded black wings of the monarch just before it moved between worlds. The dark mass she saw earlier that day showed the butterfly’s wings, ready to burst forth, and not a black chrysalis. Relief spread throughout her heart. Continuing to be superstitious, she interpreted this as the best-possible sign for not only the emergence of the monarch, but also for the emergence of the teen. Perhaps she, too, would now spread her own wings and venture into a transformed life.
She checked the area close by to see whether any monarchs were in a post-emergent stage of pumping and plumping their wings—filling them, readying to fly, but she saw none.
A short time later as she sat musing on her patio, a monarch flew near her, fluttered its wings as if to be certain it was observed—and perhaps even recognized—and then it left. Monarchs flit throughout her yard, but this was the first time she’d seen one on the patio.
As happens on social media, sometimes a person steps away—and the woman stepped away during those cold January weeks as she observed the chrysalis. In early February, she once again signed on and began the familiar motions of scrolling and reading and scrolling and reading—and then she stopped at an announcement: The young woman was in remission—a successful twin metamorphosis had occurred.
“Ah,” the woman sighed, smiling through tears and recalling her decision to create a “last leaf.” As it turns out, neither the young woman nor the caterpillar needed her intervention, and she got her heart’s desire for now—a happily ever after.



The full text of O’Henry’s story “The Last Leaf” can be found here. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the-last-leaf.pdf


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