Over and over and over

When you say the same word over and over it starts to sound strange and foreign. It loses it's original meaning. If you haven't experienced this then you should try it.

Anyway, there are times when I feel like this is what has happened, not with the word but more the idea, of cancer. It's been with us now for almost two months and the whole idea of our son having cancer seems stranger and more bizarre than ever.

I assume it should be the opposite. We let ideas "settle in" and "percolate." You get used to it, right? I think what has happened is that in the weeks after the diagnosis and surgery we held on to some tried and true interpretations of catastrophes like this: it happens to more people than you realize; it makes you stronger; people get through this; your community sustains you; and so on.

These are all true and good. But as time goes on, even if we don't hit major set backs, the hard reality of the situation (for you liberal arts majors: the unconstructed irreducible reality) defies any interpretation. And so the ideas that we plaster on to this reality wear around the edges and start to seem ill fitting and strange if we look at them for too long.

Maybe our interpretations are like songs. New ones can enthrall us but wear thin after a while. Even newer ones come along and, though the beat or hook might be similar, we become enthralled all over again. The same goes for our understandings of events like these. They can't remain static lest they start to seem false or forced or inauthentic.

For me, this is another reason to continue talking and writing about it. Our stories have to constantly evolve, if only slightly, so that the hard, unknowable edges of reality become softer once again.