Stories of Hope

Eric Berryman Diagnosed in 1998 at age 58 Nonsmall cell lung cancer “Cancer made me more afraid than the bullets that once came in my direction, but I do not munch shark cartilage or drink green tea, except at a Chinese restaurant. What time remains I try to use to prepare for the eternity that awaits me."

In September 1998, an x-ray of my chest darkened with a adenocarcinoma tumor the size of Philadelphia and life as my wife and I lived it more or less ground to a halt. The afternoon of the diagnosis we played miniature golf. At night, we took tiny little anti-anxiety pills to get to sleep. Our bed time prayers got longer. We seemed to hug more than usual. Cancer is one of the dread diseases that give the patient time to prepare. I took myself over to Murphy's Funeral Home to sign up as a future customer, bringing along my military retirement papers.

I figured on being dead a week from Monday, all things considered. I wanted the whole nine yards due a naval officer of modest seniority: the horses, caisson, band and rifle detail and a plot in Arlington National Cemetery. Besides, having served as a military pall bearer I know that the pageantry helps to distract the mourners. Funeral details are astonishingly complex and exhausting. There was no reason my widow or the children should have to make decisions about coffin quality, embalming or type of shoes or clothing to be worn by the deceased. There are so many official papers to produce. I wrote a letter to the children and finished mapping college options for a favorite niece and cleared up my office.

A week or so later, I hemorrhaged. Just a little bit, at first. "The hospital says to come in immediately if it's more than a teaspoon full," my wife says. "No, no. It's nothing much. I'll sleep sitting up." But the flow got worse. Involuntary. Unstoppable. It came in buckets, seems like, and every effort to wash the sink was defeated. I ended up standing on the front lawn, fertilizing the grass. If the towel had been white and not dark blue, my wife probably would not have made the drive to the hospital. She ran a lot of lights - carefully. I got lung cancer because my early childhood was in Berlin during World War II and people all around me smoked. After the war, I'd follow Allied soldiers competing with other German kids scrounging cigarettes and smoking the butts the soldiers tossed away.

I got cancer because I was in the US military and inhaled from boredom. Is it possible I used to wonder, to report for midnight watch at sea and not hold a cigarette in one hand and clutch a cup of black coffee in the other? I got it because I was in combat and smoked to dispel fear. I never bothered with antioxidants. Don't know what they are. I never ran a marathon or worked out regularly or jogged or dodged bacon and pork chops in the mess hall. I got lung cancer because I learned to smoke cigars aboard helicopters over Vietnam. The wind didn't put them out. Later, I smoked them simply because I liked the smell. I got cancer because I was born and given life and we all have to die of something.

The lung cancer I got was more characteristic of women and none-smokers, they said. My cancer is now in remission but I am wary and disbelieving. The treacherous bastard is hiding, just lurking around the corner waiting to ambush me again. I don't believe it for a moment. So I savor each conscious moment. I wouldn't go back to my pre-cancer life if it came on a silver plate. The cancer woke me up. Bushes do not born only for Moses, they burn for us abundantly but we are mostly too numbed out to notice. Cancer made the lights blink for me. Life is not a hurrying on to a receding future, a Welsh poet wrote. I celebrate my life more now then ever I did before.

Cancer made me more afraid than the bullets that once came in my direction, but I do not munch shark cartilage or drink green tea, except at a Chinese restaurant. What time remains I try to use to prepare for the eternity that awaits me. I have discovered a surprising capacity for faith and attend daily Mass. Who'd have believed it? I am inclined to give things away and dote on my granddaughter and never sweat the small stuff.

We hired a maid to clean house and visit places like Paris and London and Rome each year. Some times, twice. In the end, I never want to say, "gee, I wish there were more time.' There is no allotted life-span. September 11th, last year reaffirmed the fact for us all.

My wife, Bobbie, was at her desk in the Pentagon. She survived, but the close call still blisters a dream or two of my sleep. What I aim for is acceptance of death when it comes knocking. Maybe even a cheery 'welcome, I've been waiting.' In the end, I want the faith of the English poet William Blake who sang aloud hymns of praise as he lay dying. In the end I just want to accept and to say thanks.