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November 15
St. Francis Chapel, St. John’s University, Collegeville
As the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” or our plans sometimes run amok. With only minutes before the service in Elrosa at Sts. Peter and Paul was to begin, I quickly realized there was no Mass since the parking lot was empty. Maybe the priest was sick or a funeral had preempted the scheduled Mass listed in the weekly bulletin I checked a few days in advance. While I thought of nearby churches, I became resigned to the fact that there was no way to get to a Mass in time so I returned home reformulating my day. St. John’s University’s daily student Mass at 11:30 was my backup; the colleges had daily afternoon Masses so I kept the St. Cloud State Newman Center and St. Benedict’s and St. John’s schedules handy. At home I checked the college map and made my way on the back roads to St. John’s, intentionally parking in a lot on the edge of campus far from the chapel to get in a good walk. I found nearby buildings, but no chapel and did not want to find myself in any area restricted for monastery only. Eventually I spied a young woman dashing into a very small square building and decided to follow her. The tiny St. Francis chapel was about the size of a single-car garage with three rows of chairs and a minimalist altar. Once the students had prepared the altar for Mass, the priest got up from the first row, a bald, bespectacled gentleman in his 70’s unremarkable to me until he spoke. In only one sentence, I had a flashback of that voice saying “pusillanimous fool” and was pretty sure he was either Father Dale from our St. Scholastica college days, 1988-1991, or his voice twin. It had been a few decades, so I was skeptical until he tossed in a few huge words like eschatological, which he defined as “relating to death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind” and very interesting Greek history. The Greeks believed time was circular and nothing changes so they had no fear of the end of days in great contrast to our understanding of time. It was him! What a happy happenstance. We caught up briefly after Mass and I left with a heart extra full.
Connections
Reconnecting with Father Dale made me wonder about the connections I had made with my students. The gospel, Luke 17:26-37, tells of the fire and brimstone of Lot’s Sodom, “Whoever strives to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will keep it.” The message is to trust in the Lord, stop fretting about the future and to focus on the present. Now I felt a strong connection to this gospel as it resonated with me in a short pep talk I gave the ROCORI football team in September 2018 weeks after being diagnosed. I emphasized not lamenting the past or perseverating on the future with all kinds of football analogies like the urgency of it being fourth down fourth quarter with seconds remaining and I needed that Hail Mary. It was a short spiel in the crowded locker room with many of the players who had been in my classes or were on the class lists I had to give up. They were so quiet and respectful, it was eerie.
Over the course of my treatment I had encountered many students as nurses in the hospital, scribes in the clinic, or practitioners in other areas reaching out with their medical wisdom. If we had a long enough chat, I could almost always recall the topic of an essay they wrote. And then both of us would be amazed that I had remembered it! Correcting essays was both the bane and the joy of being an English teacher for me. At one point I had sixty 8+ page papers that took 45 minutes each to correct in three weeks plus my other classes’ work. I would try to correct one before school, one during prep, several after school and a least a dozen on the weekend. I would type a note for each student noting strengths and needs improvement areas since my handwriting was not great and they generally could not read cursive. But these same essays were the reason I got to know students so well.
In my senior literature class, we read Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (The Young adult adaptation) : An Olympian’s Journey from Airman to Castaway to Captive and followed with six writing prompt choices my coworker Pam recommended. Without a close second, the book was one of the most popular books I had taught. Several students who would not consider themselves to be readers had to be held back from reading ahead and a few finished it in a few nights anyway. Many students chose the prompt: “Write your own story of inspiration and strength. You could write about how you are unbroken. If you feel like you have been broken, share why you are a broken person and what you can do to persevere.” Some of the essays were written slapdash, some had glimmers of depth and some broke my heart. Four out of sixty-two in the two classes wrote about their suicide attempts. No matter the time of day, I contacted the school guidance counselors. Shout out to guidance counselors everywhere. Sometimes I wondered if I should remove that prompt, but ultimately decided that I’d rather have a student upset with me for contacting the counselor than dead. Two of the students chose me to reach out for help and two were already getting mental health support. One young woman’s essay ended with, “It was a good day, I didn’t have a noose in my closet.” Gulp. You truly never know what effect you have on others. My students made me a better person, aware that I often had no idea what they were dealing with.
One of the best and worst parts of trudging down the cancer road is having others reach out when they are diagnosed. Some are close friends, others are strangers that quickly found a place in my heart. Shortly after Mom was diagnosed with end stage ovarian cancer and was too weak to attend her chemotherapy classes, I attended in her place. The nurse instructor had that short hair that I recognized as regrowth not a haircut, a talent I had acquired along with wigdar: I could pick one out of a crowd. Before she started the chemo education, I shared my history and she shared that she was six months out of treatment. We shared the same diagnosis and also were the first survivors either had met with it: ductal and lobular carcinoma. She breezed through the educational materials then we switched roles and she asked me quite a few questions in our tiny, serendipitous support group. We shared, we commiserated, then parted ways. In a three-way win, I was able to advocate for Mom with her chemo, feel the support from someone with the same diagnosis and reap the benefits of helping someone else.
On the golf course with Scott one sunny afternoon, I took a call from a woman I didn’t know well who got my number from a mutual friend. The woman on the phone was distressed about her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis and angry and scared about the treatment plan, upset that her mother would have chemo before surgery. I understood that concern. Cut the cancer out. Cut it out now. Don’t let it grow or spread. But for larger tumors or some subtypes like my HER2 positive version, the best practice is to do chemo, run a PET scan to see if the chemo is working, adjust if needed, finish chemo and then surgery. It is a long process, but beats removing the tumor and having chemo that is less effective. Over the course of a few holes while Scott played on, I was able to console the woman. She called her Mom and consoled her too, then called me the next day to thank me and report they had all slept well. Her mother was a woman of deep faith, best friends with Jesus, who added me to her daily prayers, so ultimately, I got much more than I gave.