In sickness and in health...

He watched her slowly dying in his arms. Literally dying. And all he wanted to do was make the physical separation as gentle as possible, with the least physical pain. Benjie, exhausted and drained, was holding Ann’s frail body, wracked with cancer, as she slowly moved to the next life. Her last request: that her family take care of Benjie. Benjie had decided, the moment he heard his wife had breast cancer, that he would devote all his time in caring for her. And total care he gave – physical, mental, emotional and together, they walked their spirituality. Moment to moment until death came between them.

There can be a time in a life of a marriage or a relationship, when the fundamentals change. Perhaps roles reversed. Great difficulties faced. When the bond of love is forced to be defined and redefined on a new level. In sickness and in health – until death and parting – this is a phrase couples exchange when they commit themselves to each other for life. Many are fortunate not to see into their future the transformative experience of sickness. But for those who suddenly come face to face with the verdict of cancer or any life threatening disease, the world (as we live it day to day) suddenly begins to spin.

When sickness comes to one or the other of a couple, I believe a pact has been made in the soul level that one will help the other evolve through the great challenge of pain and sickness. Sickness is a cleansing wake-up call of the soul not just for the one who is sick but for those who care for him/her. Mortality stares us in the face and we are left with the realization that truly, life is so very, very short. In digesting that information – what then do we do as it would affect our choices and directions? How do we look at our partner? What level of commitment do we give in caring for him/her? Perhaps sickness is the greatest eye opener that can reflect the depth (or shallowness) of a couple’s love for each other. Together, they may choose to dive into the transformative experience. Or likewise slowly move apart, separate – as each faces his or her own shadows, past and present issues.

In that great chasm of soul-cleansing experience that other couples undergo, love’s depth is challenged. Both individuals experience the catharsis of love’s pain, joy and cleansing. It is the process of finding that love truly goes beyond this life, this physical body’s personalities. Love painfully makes it way back to the soul.

Attention is always first given to the person who is sick, but many do not see the caregiving partner’s process. How can one explain the heart-wrenching fears that overcome the caregiving partner when one sees the other suffering in pain? Nights spent in the hospital, staring into the darkness, listening to the partner’s labored breathing, in prayerful silence for healing to occur. Those nights when, deep alone in one’s mind, the caregiving partner comes face to face with all the aloneness that the human spirit can feel, where the spirit’s direction can only call to the greater Force for grace. Time spent in healing, hoping that healing takes faster and yet understanding that everything is a process...in God’s time. Moments spent in concentration as medication is remembered, dispensed with in accuracy to doctor’s orders. The mind, practical in the thoughts of the financial bearing the illness assumes; the challenge of balancing roles of being father and mother to the children while the other is sick; the overall physical, mental and emotional challenges of caring and loving the patient unconditionally. Sleepless nights. Sleepless days. And finally, for those who battle the hardest to keep Life despite all odds, the experience of love’s supreme sacrifice – where the caregiving partner moves through the darkness of experiencing the deepest loneliness and grief of learning to let go.

I have had friends who have said to me that they are not sure if they can take care of their husbands with such total intensity (as Benjie did to Ann) if they get sick. Or each one questioning in her mind if the husband would be capable to care of her with such devotion. One friend whose marriage has become one of convenience, fearfully told me that she hopes God doesn’t throw her such an experience that would force her to take care of her husband she doesn’t love, but which she would care for out of a sense of duty.

I know of a woman who went dancing almost every night while her husband was strapped in bed with colon cancer. She just couldn’t face the fact that he was dying. The transformation is not only for the one who is sick, but for the partner – and doubly more so if the partner chooses to be the caregiver.

A couple is blessed if such an experience of sickness transforms them to become deeper people, and more loving as a couple. A couple is also blessed if no such experience is ever faced in their life together. Should we know of anyone who is sick, this article is to invite the reader to perhaps take a little extra effort to comfort the caregiving partner, to be sensitive to offer help, an ear to listen to, a shoulder to cry on or a hug. The clue that sickness comes to a couple is a sure sign that God’s transformative grace is hovering nearby.

A beautiful, moving and highly informative book to read for caregivers and cancer sufferers is Ken Wilber’s Grace and Grit. Wilber, the 21st century guru of consciousness and the leading light in the field of integral consciousness, movingly tells his story as a caregiver to his beloved wife who had breast cancer.