Discovery

In legal trials, there is a part of the trial they call discovery, where both parties share the details the crime or situation that has brought itself to a trial, and eventually, through opposing arguments, the court seeks to find a judgement.

This morning I came across a post on Facebook from my friend Tabitha Montgomery talking about cancer, and how the experience of cancer can focus us on the remaining sand in the hourglass. I made a long comment on her page, and as the words began to build, I felt a need to expand my thoughts further than what seemed appropriate for a Facebook comment on someone else’s page. It seemed to me that my own Substack is a better place to go into more detail.

So here we are, in my safe place, where I discover myself by using my words.

When I discovered that I had cancer, immediately I felt I must share my journey. I am a writer, so either as a gift or a curse, I must write. I have little choice. But why do we writers feel the need to share? Ego cannot be ignored, but we also share because sharing is what we know.

My decision to share my cancer status was influenced by the death of a good friend when I was in my early twenties. She was a lawyer, a very good lawyer and a communi activist. It was through her work and efforts that the derelict Manhattan building in downtown Vancouver was saved, restored and became a co-op in 1982. My friend’s name was Diane Kilpatrick. There is a plaque in the lobby of the Manhattan in her memory. Diane died from melanoma cancer, which aggressively spread to her brain. She kept this news secret until the very end.

As a woman lawyer, she did not want her peers to treat her differently due to the cancer. For her, it was important to win her arguments on her skills and merit, and not to win out of sympathy.

The law in those days, as it is today, was written and litigated by men. As a woman, she wanted the respect of her peers, most of whom were men. She wanted them to treat her as an equal, and she felt that revealing her cancer would give her opponents an advantage over her in discovery and arguments. So keeping this news of her cancer private, she could win the argument on merit, and not on sympathy.

At the time I remember that I was very angry with her for not allowing her friends in on her pain. I was angry at death. I was angry with God for giving her the cancer, angty at Him for taking her from us at such a young age. Let’s face it, I was an angry young man.

As I write this now after my own cancer story, some forty years after her death, I see her motives and understand her very personal decision better. My discovery is a result of my life and experience.

For me the decision to share or not to share was different. I had to share. I had to write my way out. I had no choice but to find my way through this difficult time, this fight with my own body. The weapon I would use would be my own words.

I knew that cancer would come with intense revelations, and that while I had a struggle ahead, that I would endure. My words would be the scraps of bread left in the forest to help me find my way home. My words would endure after me. If death was my fate, my words could tell my story. They would serve as my record. They would be my story. I would share my discovery, and together we could experience an expansion of consciousness. I knew my cancer would reveal to me secrets, and would make life more precious by taking me to the edge. By pushing me to the edge of the cliff, I would either grow wings and fly, or I would fall and crash. Or like when I would lucid dream as a child, perhaps I would fly over houses and be present in the rooms where other secrets were kept and revealed.

Cancer was my time of discovery. The facts of the case were laid out, each side revealing their evidence. Discovery let me learn about my mortality, cementing my need to cherish every day and moment. Cancer gave me a good sense of the strength of my “case”, and where agreement might be reached. Lives change during this discovery process.

I am reminded here of the concept of big rocks, little rocks, sand. First you move the big rocks, then the little rocks, and lastly, the sand.

Where are the big rocks and little rocks in an hourglass?

Why is there only sand?

Every Grain Of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet floods every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and the morals of despair

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beams down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I'll always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Bob Dylan