What
we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an
end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we
start from.
T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets
No matter where you are in your cancer journey, life has changed!
And we enter what Dr. Seuss refers to as "The Waiting Place".
T
he last book he published before his death was fittingly a serious tale of the ups and down of life.
"You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting..."
What
we often times call the beginning is really marking the end of
something. This “something” can be the
end of a job, the end of living in a certain place, the end of a friendship, or
the temporary loss of health, the loss of a body part or the loss of a
life. The end is where we begin, where
we start anew. For this to happen we
must grieve our losses. Just as everyone
is an individual, everyone mourns in his or her own personal way and in his or
her own time. On the average it can take
18 - 24 months to complete the mourning process - for children much
longer.
The grieving, mourning process
allows us to begin again, to open our heart to change and to new
possibilities, to start again.
