Silence Like Cancer Grows
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| Picture by the author, Jakarta, 2020. |
"Mom was diagnosed with cancer." I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence on repeat. I remember the word 'cancer' and 'silence'. Two words. It illustrates the speed of light growing silence and gives a visual image of swelling and malignant or harmful silence. Simon wrote it, in a sense, to depict how cold and lonely this world is for us to reach out fearlessly. The multitudes of isolation have proven unseen and unnoticed, killing us like cancer. "Mom was diagnosed with cancer." |
That particular morning, I was with her in the doctor's room at the Gatot Soebroto Army Hospital. The doctor's room is about 3x3 meters. The subspecialist doctor, lightheartedly and without a trace of empathy, started the conversation with: "Why are you here?" I was sitting in the corner, holding back my anger and witnessing the confused faces of my father and mother answering that question. My mother struggled to respond to all of her limitations. "My stomach hurts, Doc." And then, without even bothering to wait for her to finish, the doctor immediately cut off that sentence. The words that my mother tried to frame with all her limited vocabulary. "After all, you wouldn't be here if you had a stomachache." I tried to hold back my nerves and the resentment buried beneath my ears, which were beginning to burn. I was not good at enduring Patience, not least when I heard that my mother had cancer.
"Mom was diagnosed with cancer."
Dad alone attempted to provide the chronology. My mother's medical history has years of bladder infection and complaints of unbearable abdominal pain a few weeks ago. A sore that led to her being rushed to the Indonesian Christian University Hospital. Mom never liked hospitals. I have tried to persuade her to go to the hospital for ten years. She was last admitted to the hospital when she visited me in Yogyakarta. That was because she fainted from the pain. I recall that she also ran away before recovering from Panti Rapih Hospital. The pain she experienced was unbearable. The provisional prognosis was a cyst in the uterus. Mom never liked the hospital and thus resented being in that particular one. She chose to be transferred to Gatot Soebroto Army Hospital. It was there that she was treated for one week.
The state covered all medical costs. This state program was no joke. However, the state does not guarantee the behaviour of people who work at the hospital in the sense of a 'free' health system. The term 'free' justifies the scoldings, cold attitudes, and sharp words the nurses and doctors uttered. "It's excusable; they're tired and working," my father whispered. "I'm also working; I'm just like them, we all are, so no excuses for being wicked", I retorted.
I just stood riveted. Silenceless. Full of unbridled rage. I could practically sense my heartbeat beating fast as I shouted the words I wanted to say to the hospital system.
"Mom was diagnosed with cancer."
Test after test was undertaken. The anatomical pathology only showed that the mother had cancer without knowing what type of cancer it was or its condition. The only thing known is the pain she must have endured daily as she waited. What was known was that day after day passed with the anxiety that the cancer was spreading. All she knew was that a 16-centimetre malignant mass was lodged in her uterus. And the doctor told her to wait. And the nurses scolded her to be patient. They said it's not just your mother who is ailing.
My mother was asked to wait a month for lung, heart and anesthesia examinations. Then, wait another week for the surgery to remove the uterus. Like all the other women I saw queuing at the Obgyn clinic in the hospital. Dad said: "Patience, this is a central referral hospital. All the patients are going to this hospital."
I never liked insider dealing. But, at this point, I had to breathe in my mother's pain, my father's confusion, my anguish. In all this whirlwind, I want my mother to be called to task. "Would God doubt my integrity if I prayed for an insider to help expedite my mother's surgery?"
"Mom was diagnosed with cancer."
That late afternoon, I walked my dog for the typical brisk walk. I plugged in my earbuds. I turned on the same song. And I cried for about 45 minutes. This was the ritual I performed every day, whether or not God would accept it. Many times I told myself. The incriminations have accumulated and crusted in my head. Denial. I end my footsteps with a deep breath and then ask who-knows-what, for whatever reason, with no expectation of an answer, "How come life is like this?"
"Mom was diagnosed with cancer."
No, silence is not like cancer that grows. Cancer is noisy, rowdy, hateful, full of misinformation and anxiety, and considered close to death. Silence is not like that. It's a choice, and cancer is not.
With strides that went nowhere,
Jessy
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