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blatherskiteNo, I haven't forgotten all of you... just been too busy the past week to do much writing.
Shoshanna's father, Samuel, was back in the hospital last week for cancer surgery, and I was down in Boston to help him and his wife Micky, his son Jonas, and (of course) Shoshanna through this. Samuel has metastatic kidney cancer, and has thus far beaten three tumors and endured the related surgeries and their sequelae: removal of a brain tumor, removal of the kidney that was responsible for the metastasis, and most recently, removal of an abdominal metastasis. The surgeries have all gone well, and he's recovering well from the current surgery too.
There are many different definitions of courage. Hemingway's definition of "guts" (apparently from an interview with Dorothy Parker, in the 30 November 1929 issue of The New Yorker), frequently paraphrased as "courage is grace under pressure", is one I particularly like. When you're facing a situation you cannot evade, it's not necessarily courageous to face that situation: after all, you have no choice, and courage involves a choice. What you can choose is how you deal with the situation, and remaining gracious to your family and the hospital staff in the face of pain, fear, the humiliation of daily life in a hospital ICU, and having little or no control over yourself and your body is to me, one of the finest forms of courage.
It's inspiring to watch, and an example I hope to live up to should such a fate befall me.
Shoshanna's father, Samuel, was back in the hospital last week for cancer surgery, and I was down in Boston to help him and his wife Micky, his son Jonas, and (of course) Shoshanna through this. Samuel has metastatic kidney cancer, and has thus far beaten three tumors and endured the related surgeries and their sequelae: removal of a brain tumor, removal of the kidney that was responsible for the metastasis, and most recently, removal of an abdominal metastasis. The surgeries have all gone well, and he's recovering well from the current surgery too.
There are many different definitions of courage. Hemingway's definition of "guts" (apparently from an interview with Dorothy Parker, in the 30 November 1929 issue of The New Yorker), frequently paraphrased as "courage is grace under pressure", is one I particularly like. When you're facing a situation you cannot evade, it's not necessarily courageous to face that situation: after all, you have no choice, and courage involves a choice. What you can choose is how you deal with the situation, and remaining gracious to your family and the hospital staff in the face of pain, fear, the humiliation of daily life in a hospital ICU, and having little or no control over yourself and your body is to me, one of the finest forms of courage.
It's inspiring to watch, and an example I hope to live up to should such a fate befall me.