Suspended

The night my father died, I was at Lisa's house for a typical Saturday night sleepover. My parents were away with friends. I was 11.

Early Sunday morning, Lisa's mother woke me. "Your mother's on the phone," she said. I stumbled downstairs, half-asleep. Standing barefoot in my nightgown, I heard my mother's voice on the line—tense, tremulous, trying to hold it together. "You’re coming home. Now. You need to be brave." And the line went dead.

I looked around the room, my eyes landing on Lisa’s mother. Her face held something I couldn’t read, something tight and unfamiliar. Though the receiver was still warm in my small hand, the house suddenly felt foreign, as if I'd already left this safe place behind.

My parents' friends arrived to pick me up. I’d never been in their car before. It was a big sedan. I was a skinny little girl. I sat huddled in the cavernous back seat, very much alone. And just like that, I entered the terrible place between fear and truth, suspended in time.

That space has no air. No gravity. Time isn't measured by minutes, but by the thudding pulse in your ears and the shallow rise and fall of your breath. The body goes rigid while the mind frantically searches for meaning. You're nowhere and everywhere, grasping for solid ground that just isn't there.

The smallest things are etched in memory, the scent of the leather seat, the goosebumps on your legs, the tone of a grownup’s voice, but entire conversations are unheard. You’re a bystander to your own life, watching events unfold in slow motion.

Hope and dread sit side by side, each whispering their version of the future, until the truth arrives, and you're forced to trade the agony of uncertainty for the hard weight of knowing.

And one question thrums beneath it all: How bad will it be?

On February 4, 2021, suspension returned without warning, like a trapdoor opening beneath my feet, when my new chiropractor called to say there was a problem with the routine x-rays he took before my first adjustment. "There are holes in your bones. They look like three-hole punch holes. Have you heard of multiple myeloma?"

I had heard of multiple myeloma. I am a former oncology nurse. I knew multiple myeloma to be a death sentence, swift and ruthless.

And just like that, I entered that airless, hovering space again. Nothing looked or felt like mine. Utterly alone. Inconsolable. My former life was a stranger, stripped as I was of my sense of agency and meaning. In an instant, I felt erased–a ghost.

Death remains perhaps the last true taboo in our culture. As Arnold Toynbee observed, in our society "death is considered un-American, an affront to every citizen's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We glorify the belief that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, even conquering mortality itself.

When the unspeakable happens, we are, for a time, suspended. We struggle to make sense of who we are without the perception of safety and integrity that our home, our partner, our family, our job, or our bodily integrity provides.

But no one can stay suspended forever. Eventually, we must come down, plant our feet on the ground and find a new path forward. We must leave behind what was and forge a new what is.

Life with cancer means the unknown is a constant companion. Right now, it’s a bone marrow biopsy to see if the current therapy has worked, and the CAR-T therapy that’s likely to follow. And yeah, it’s uncomfortable. Left to its own devices, my mind scrambles around, searching for answers, for certainty.

There is no certainty. Not for me. Not for you.

I am learning to manage my mind. To live the life that's on offer. This one. Right here.

There’s a scene in Mary Poppins where Mary takes the children to visit her Uncle Albert. He has a condition he describes as "quite serious." Uncontrollable laughter causes him to float up to the ceiling. As Albert giggles, Bert and the children can't help but join in, and soon they're all suspended in mid-air, sharing a tea party on the ceiling. The room is filled with laughter. The only way to come back down is to think of something sad.

I like to imagine the possibility of that sort of suspension. Up in the air, I don't need answers. I can enjoy the moment, have fun. Be an untethered version of me. I can discover moments of lightness here–a joke that catches me off guard, an evening at the dog park with Bonnie, giggling with a child. Here, suspension becomes not just bearable, but beautiful.

That skinny eleven-year-old girl is still in me, still navigating the space between fear and truth. But now she knows something vital: we are all suspended, all the time, between what was and what will be. The trick is learning to dance in midair.

Your turn. When have you entered that suspended place? Are you there right now? What did it teach you or what is it teaching you? How might you embrace the life that’s on offer? Could you dance?