|
My Money, My lifeDAY NINE
By Staff Writer COLLINS CONNER After getting her annual mammogram, Linda Howe, left, is nervous as radiology technician Sheri Raley shows her the film. One winter morning, Linda Howe went to the mausoleum to put flowers by Milt's crypt. On the grounds outside, mourners gathered around a freshly dug grave. The minister's prayer caught on the wind and disappeared before it got to Linda. But she could see the slumped shoulders and numb faces of the family. "I'm glad I'm not in that group over there," she thought. It had been six months since Milt died. Linda had started saying her nightly prayers again. She socialized. Six days a week she was at Peace Lutheran, singing in the choir, playing at services or tutoring kids. Her moods weren't veering so sharply or so often. Then a mammogram flung her back to fear and anger. The radiologist saw cysts on her breast and recommended an ultrasound for a more detailed picture. Linda called her daughter. "I flunked my mammogram. Undoubtedly, they'll put me right in for chemo or radiation or something." It was Milt's fault, she told Hospice counselor Patti Colligan, who still met with Linda every few weeks. "I'm mad at him that he left me. . . . I've been telling myself I'm a survivor. But, all the biopsies. It's a pain to go through. . . . Just the thought of being sick and being alone is something else." There it was, the core of her fear. It dated to 1983, when Linda was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She was 39. Doctors said that within a year, she'd be in a wheelchair. Milt didn't take her illness seriously. He rarely visited her in the hospital. "I'd go a week at a time and not see him, knowing that he was out that night, drinking after work, and all that stuff and he couldn't give me an hour of his time." His indifference stunned her. She presumed if she didn't get better, he would dump her in a nursing home. Several years later, the MS went into remission and stayed there, but Linda still didn't feel safe. She scanned her body for symptoms, always expecting the worst. That's why, early this year, she panicked over the cysts. She scheduled the ultrasound for Feb. 19. Long before this, Linda had signed up for a self-help seminar the weekend of Feb. 16. Called the Landmark Forum, it's a second-cousin to the 1970s EST movement in California and is billed as a way to "get at the heart of who you are." Now, worried about her health, Linda didn't want to go, but she was too timid to cancel her reservation. The seminar was held at a hotel conference room in Tampa. Linda and 164 other recruits sat on metal chairs for nearly 15 hours each day. They weren't allowed to snack, chat, take notes or wander about. They got two 10-minute bathroom breaks and a meal break. The second day, Forum leader David Cunningham told them to close their eyes and picture themselves in terrible peril. Linda thought about snakes, thousands and thousands of snakes. She felt them slip across her feet and wrap around her calves, cool and treacherous. With her eyes closed, listening to Cunningham as he ushered them into their nightmares, Linda imagined herself crossing the carpet of snakes to the edge of the room, to an open window, 30-feet high. For long seconds she stood suspended, eyes closed, terrorized, between snake pit and abyss. Cunningham shouted: STOP! Open your eyes. Turn your chair around. Sit knee to knee with the person in the row behind you. Don't talk. Just look into each other's eyes. The person behind Linda was a forceful fellow who had talked incessantly at breakfast that morning, intimidating Linda with his intensity. Cunningham began to drone: a hypnotic message of love, trust. Linda and the stranger peered at each other. Unobstructed. Unprotected. Intimate. Linda cringed with shame. "Does he know I'm sitting here with half a breast?" she thought. The snakes slid back. Into her mind. Into his eyes. She fought the urge to turn away. The stranger smiled. The snakes fled. Tears sprang to Linda's eyes and slipped down her cheeks. At home on Monday, she was on fire with new-found resolve. She unpacked from her weekend in Tampa, tidied her home, washed the dishes. She picked up her sister-in-law, Nancy Nickerson, and headed to the scheduled ultrasound. The staff performed the quick test -- no sign of cancer. She told Nancy the Forum had been a catharsis that purged her of her anger toward Milt. "I have forgiven my husband. I feel so much lighter, like walking on a cloud." Tuesday night, the Forum held its graduation. One by one, the participants described what the seminar had done for them. "I can go great places if I choose to do so," Linda said. "Nobody is saying I have to stay in the house and hide, 'cause I'm only a housewife. "It's like coming out of a cocoon. . . . The mourning part is going back and I'm starting to move ahead, finally."
| |
