More than 3.1 million U.S. women with a history of breast cancer were alive on January 1st, 2014.
In early August of this year I sat in a restaurant booth in Pittsburgh, Penn., anxiously calling my younger brother. I had told him that I was going to be in town and would come by to see him but had not been able to reach him. On my last day in town, I had become more concerned that his phone was going directly to voicemail. I called my sister in Maryland and she called our brother and got no answer. “You better go over there” my baby sister told me.
When my brother was a teenager he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He lived across the hall from my mother for years, and after her death, continued to live alone. My sister and I stay in contact with him by phone — actually, he calls us more often than we do him — and when I am in town, I stop by to see him. We would like to have him closer to the bulk of the family in Maryland, but he has resisted that suggestion. As I raced to reach him on this day, I ran through some scenarios in my mind, anticipating the possibility that my brother was too ill to answer the phone. I was mentally preparing myself for an extended stay in Pittsburgh to care for him, and when he answered my pounding on his door, I fussed at him: “You cannot be out of touch with us!” I was so relieved to see him alive that I did not assess his living conditions. I hugged him and left to return my rental car and catch my flight back to Indy.
I recently entered the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic to visit my brother, who had agreed with my sister that he needed to stay there for a while, for he had spent an unknown amount of time without his medications, and schizophrenia had taken full control. My sister had driven to Pittsburgh from Maryland and found my brother lost in his delusions, and taken him to the hospital that had employed me while I was an art student. She cleaned his apartment and called in the second team; I came to Pittsburgh to stay with him for the time that he needs for his medications to readjust his thinking and behavior. But we discussed, my sister and I, where we failed our brother. He has the habit of calling us once each week; those calls tailed off in recent months and we did not question why. His circumstances were dismal and we did not know this because we did not reach out and touch him. He cruised the lanes of schizophrenia without the guard rails of his family’s care.
A very good friend is traveling through the dark tunnel of depression and I resisted the urge to reach out and say that “I understand.” I believe that our pain is unique unto ourselves, and no amount of trudging in another’s shoes is going to bring “understanding.” When people are going through trials, we sympathize and empathize and send prayers and good thoughts; all those things are good, but the suffering one needs the care shown by the touch. I was busy with my own life and did not make an effort to see my brother’s. Had I asked him if he was well, he would have said that he was. I will not be too busy, distracted and disconnected to show him I need him.
Don’t ask: Do. Don’t send: Bring. Show up and show love and refuse to go away. Reach out and touch.