My Final Chapter
- Marilyn Kay Hagar
- Jun 19
- 14 min read
Good News for me but trouble in our world
Don’t worry, it’s not what you might be thinking. I’m not talking about the final chapter of my life as I’m hoping there will be many more chapters. I’m thinking about the final chapter of The Scalpel, the Paintbrush and the Pen. It needs updating.
Those of you who have read my book will know that I was diagnosed with appendix cancer and underwent major surgery three years ago. Recently I was at UCSF for my 3 year follow up appointment with Dr. Adam, my surgeon extraordinaire. I received very good news. In his words, “Your MRI shows no sign of disease and all of your blood tests are completely normal. You have perhaps a 3% chance of recurrence but I feel confident in saying that I don’t think you are going to be bothered with this again in your lifetime.”
As if that wasn’t exciting enough he also told me that he is part of writing the national guidelines for the disease I had. He was careful to say “had” not “have.” The guidelines recommend that low grade mucinous neoplasms originating in the appendix, no longer be classified as one of the appendix cancers. So not only am I now healthy and well, the word cancer has been erased from my medical history.
My appointment with Dr. Adam made me wish that my book, The Scalpel, the Paintbrush and the Pen: Healing as a Creative Art had ended with this good news. But back then I wanted the book to be published as soon as possible. Not trusting my healing I wanted it out before I wasn’t here to see it launch. Surprising myself, I am here and thankfully my story goes on.
Once again I feel reborn, like life for me is beginning anew. I don’t think I fully realized how much the medical journey I wrote about in my book was still weighing on me. I had spent the year since my last check-up consciously trying to lay the thing down. I wanted to stop seeing my life always in that context. In spite of what you might think, that took effort, but I thought I had succeeded in letting it flow down the river that is my life and land itself firmly in my past.
I did notice that I wasn’t writing. That started quite consciously when I made this art piece.
I had gone to a workshop centered on breathing. I didn’t understand that it was intended for long distance runners. What was being asked was way beyond my capacity. It left me gasping for breath and sent me tumbling back into the survival mode I had so recently emerged from. I came home and made this art to express my distress! I was surprised when a friend saw it and gasped, “ I think that woman has been working way too hard and desperately needs to rest!”
Art can speak so many truths at once. I instantly realized that my two year struggle with my own survival had been all consuming. I needed to take a break, but I didn’t realize that my break would last for a year. It has, but here I am writing at last. I wanted to reconnect and catch you up on my good news.
You would think that receiving such good news from Dr. Adam would send me jumping for joy but it wasn’t like that. When he spoke those words in my appointment I could hear my friend who was there with me clapping her hands. I wanted to clap too but I couldn’t find my clapping. It took a few days and some art process to find my unadulterated joy.
Seeking Truth Through Artmaking
What it really felt like was that I had trained for a major marathon and had run the race. I had put every last possible bit of my energy into doing that and now, crossing the finish line, I just wanted to sit down and cry from sheer exhaustion. My tears marked my full recognition of all that I had successfully dealt with, but where was my celebration?
I turned to art to try to find it. Look what happened!
In this piece I managed to get myself in a celebratory body stance but laughed out loud when I saw that my face looked more concerned than celebratory. This is what I deeply trust about art. I don’t really know how to make things come out the way I intend them. This is actually a plus if you are making art to look for information you don’t consciously know about yourself. Our art if made without the skill or intent to control it, will let us know deep truths about ourselves. In fact when working with practicing artists I often have to ask them to leave their training at the door. My face in this drawing reflects the absolute the truth of that moment in time. Sometimes even good news takes time to adjust to, especially when it reorients your life.
In this drawing, in addition to my face, when I tried to draw the heels of her shoes, it made it look like her feet were on backwards. The backwards feet let me know that while I was facing forward and into my new future, a part of me was still aimed toward the past.
Letting Go Isn’t Always Easy
As soon as Dr. Adam had delivered his good news, he told me that I didn’t have to return to UCSF for 2 years. That too should have made me happy as living in a rural part of California, it is a big effort and expense to get to San Francisco for my appointments. Instead of welcoming that news I froze. Two years suddenly seemed like an eternity. As much as I didn’t like the tense weeks before appointments when fears of recurrence arose, and as much as I didn’t like having CTs or MRIs once down there, it had been enormously reassuring each time I had been told that all was well. Would I be OK waiting two years before receiving that reassurance once again? In that moment, I thought not.
Once home however, I realized that that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was about stepping away from the safety and security that I had found at UCSF at a very traumatic time in my life. It was about stepping further away from Dr. Adam and his team, those dear ones who had been “all in” to prepare me for that big surgery. They had seen me through it and then remained present for me through my long recovery. Was I ready for this next step in my healing? It took some time and some more art but the answer is indeed, yes.
Ending a Healing Conversation
As one of my reviewers of The Scalpel, the Paintbrush and the Pen wrote, “Our individual paths through illness and treatment are mythic journeys.” In writing her review, she gave me the word mythic to describe my process. I knew that as I walked step by step through my healing time a very large perspective had revealed itself and supported me enormously in dealing with it all. That large perspective is what I’m now referring to as a mythic perspective. That said, I am not sure that I really understood the mythic power of the partnership I experienced with Dr. Adam until I imagined its ending.
As I wrote in my book the day I agreed to surgery I told Dr. Adam that I am not a traditionally religious person but am deeply spiritual. I added that I believed if we both brought our deepest healing resources to my medical situation we would be supported by a healing power stronger than either one of us could muster on our own. I had never made art reflecting that level of our connection. It was that mythic level that I needed to address now in order to move forward on my own. The title of this piece, The Healing Conversation, came to mind before I started drawing. Here is the picture that emerged.
The Healing Conversation
We are pictured here as giant mythic birds singing to each other. That is Dr. Adam on the left and me there on the right. First I drew the deep orange orb. Next I painted the two of us, one on each side of it. Then I painted the bright yellow background. When I added dots on the ground I thought I was finished but as I lived with my piece, I kept looking at their beaks. I had worked hard to portray them as open. That is when it occurred to me that our healing conversation was really a song. I added the tiny black dots swirling all around their open beaks. Some days later I added the red dots in the shape of a heart.
I kept the picture out and in the playful way I relate to my art, one day in my imagination I heard their birdsong. It reminded me of a very modern piece of classical music called Cantus Arcticus by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. The orchestration includes the soundtrack of birds in the arctic north.
I am always in awe when I realize how the unconscious mind can connect threads in our psyches. Did I draw The Healing Conversation as birds because this piece of music lives inside of me? Or was it the other way around? However it happened linking them together enhanced both and brought a present moment experience of the deep issue at hand. Do listen here to the first couple of minutes starting at 6:18 if you have a moment. I bet it will change how you feel when you look at the two birds singing in my art.
I continued with my imaginative play each time I looked at the picture. One day it was as if the art had come alive in another way. When I looked at it I heard the flapping of wings and I imagined the urgent calls of the birds as they were taking flight. It was as if the next picture was asking me to draw it. Here it is.
The Migration
Dr. Adam is flying upward as his career soars higher and higher. He is making a name for himself in the field becoming well known for his ground breaking work using robotic surgery for complex surgical procedures.
I am there flying off to the right, back into my own life. We are each singing our own song as we fly off in our different directions, our migration taking us to faraway places, our conversation now complete. My art had created a context in which I could align with the natural process of our healing conversation coming to its rightful end.
Endings have been hard for me all of my life, in big and small ways. Here, my art helped me feel grounded in my ability to step away from UCSF and all I have received there. At least for now my conversation with Dr. Adam is over. In fact I came to an important awareness. I have known how much trust I had placed in Dr. Adam to carry me through all of this, but despite all of my efforts, I am only now fully realizing how much trust I have had in myself, in my own ability to heal. Not checking in with UCSF for two years will strengthen my trust in every way. I want that very much.
Leaving with Many Blessings
I did one final piece of art in this series. Here I am flying away from UCSF. The building with all the heart windows is where my appointments took place, The building with all the green windows is where I was for my surgery. As I fly away there is memory of a stormier time over there in the upper left corner but my world here is bright with light. Should I chose to walk instead of fly, the path away is a path full of hearts. I noticed that the color of the orb in my paintings had become increasingly intense. Here it is a deep blood red. At the very end I made all those little dots meant to rain healing energy over UCSF. I did that with a blessing for all of the other patients who go there seeking healing as I did. I wish everyone, the staff and the patients, the very best. I am so deeply grateful for all I received there!
My psyche sent me to Cantus Arcticus so I knew I needed to listen to the entire piece with my medical journey in mind. When I did I was reminded of the mythic nature of music itself. If we let it, it tells stories about our human condition. It reaches beneath our words and can touch us deeply. One morning as I sat listening, I was brought to tears by the way that piece circled my entire healing journey from start to finish. It was the musical story of all that I had gone through, a story of how my illness, a powerful disruption in my life, brought love and support to the fore. It told of how, in the end, changed forever, I had found balance and resolution. At the very end of Cantus Arcticus there is a big climax and then the music and the birds begin to fade away. At the last moment a single chime sounds bringing a sense of magic and mystery, a feeling of waking up from a powerful dream to behold anew the beauty of life.
That is exactly how I am feeling now, like I’m waking up from my “cancer” dream. It is Spring and my new awakening feels timely and well supported by the natural world around me. Mother Nature is ecstatically fulfilling her promise of life, death, and rebirth, the circle of life. Without that promise how would we survive?
A Comment on our Current Political Situation
Yet as happy as I am personally our political life at this moment in the USA brings a storm cloud that is casting a very dark shadow over our world. I wanted to reach out here, but I was hesitant to post this piece because my individual story is so small compared to what we are living through in the bigger sense right now. I am going ahead with this post because as I wrote about bringing the mythic perspective to my own personal journey, I was reminded that it is also useful to bring that big perspective to the times we are living in.
Believe me I will be taking action to make my voice heard. I will be calling my government officials to let them know how I feel about all that is happening. I will be in the street to peacefully express my love for my country and my concern about this moment we are living through. I will do whatever I can think of to bring about change but it is also important to remember that when things are disintegrating we are closer to that life, death, life door, where everything comes from and where all things return. Though it is sometimes hard to see, I have learned again and again in my life that as the old falls away, the new is already being born. That is the very essence of creativity and we can trust into it.
Above all as we move forward, I want my heart to remain open and loving. I want to be present with all of my feelings especially my grief about what is happening. I have a vision. In my vision all of us who are appalled by the hatred and the bullying we are witnessing, are standing silently in the dark night. I think we might be surprised by how many of us there are and I am certain that our group would include some who voted differently than we did. In my vision we are each holding a candle representing the light that shines inside each one of us. That light guides us toward love rather than hate. May we let our little lights burn brightly. May we bring love into our world in every way we possibly can.
Many Blessings to all of you, Marilyn
An Experience For You…
Listening Deeply to Cantus Arcticus
Often when we listen to music what we register is if we like it or if we don’t like it. For this experience I ask you to put that aside. Like or not like is not relevant here. The idea is to let the music tell you a story.
If you are not used to listening to music to explore in this way, you might want to give this little exercise a try. Find a comfortable space where you will not be disturbed. Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Feel the energy in your body. If you could imagine how you are feeling inside as a color, what color would it be? Let that color fill your entire body. When you are feeling relaxed and present, start the music. It helps to close your eyes and imagine the music coming into your ears but don’t let it stop there, open your body to the sound. If the music was talking what would it be saying to you. You may experience this in feelings rather than words. Just follow your experience as the music continues. Write about your experience in your journal afterwards.
Just a little expiment you might like to try. Do yours first and then if you are interested I’ve written more extensively below about what came from my listening.
My own listening experience in detail
The first movement begins with a wandering solo and felt very much like who we all are as we flit about in our lives doing all that we do. Though we all know that our lives will end, that time isn’t now. As we busy ourselves thoughts of our death are mostly buried deep inside as we walk in the world with a certain innocence about our situation. The music pauses on one note, the bird songs begin. Very soon there is more disturbance in their sound and the music becomes more erratic. With the entrance of brass instruments there is an ominous turn. “Oh Oh!” Something is stirring, Something is wrong. Something is threatening, an urgent alert plays over and over as concern mounts. The birds are increasingly disturbed as well. It reminded me of my early symptom, the medical appointments, the tests, all culminating in surgeries and a final diagnosis.
But then the cellos sweep in to lift us out of the chaos with a comforting theme that floats into our awareness with great heart. Violins and other instruments join in as the theme develops and swells, as if there is a gathering in the midst of chaos to support and carry us forward. My book is really the story of all the people and experiences that led me to feel that support from the beginning to the end of my healing journey.
By the end of the first movement things have calmed down but here and there the horns that delivered the original warning sound gently in the background confirming that while there is help and support we are still involved in very serious business.
The second movement begins with the bird conversation, the one that came to mind when I looked at my art. The entire movement supports the theme that the birds present. In my mind it was as if a plan was being formed between the principals of the conversation, a detailed plan that would deal with the problem at hand. For me, symbolized my finding partnership with Dr. Adam, and forming our plan to address my healing.
The final movement begins with flocks of birds. It is as if they are gathering energy for what is going to happen next. The orchestra joins with the theme of the first movement but the energy seems more organized rather than chaotic, softer sounds convey the trouble compared to the harshness of the horns in the first movement. All the help has been gathered and organized and the plan is being put into motion. It is serious business, but moving forward, marching onward with great determination. The energy rises and rises and rises, as do the sounds of the birds until it reaches a climax, complete with the massive flock of birds taking off and flying into the distance. To my mind, my healing plan has been executed, carried off to perfection. The work is done.
As the piece draws to a close the energy quiets. After all that upward expansion the music comes gently floating down, down, down like gentle rain, soft and reassuring as the cacophony of bird calls fade into the distance. As the birds continue to fade away there is sense of magic and mystery about all that has just happened and with a single ring of the triangle or a chime it feels like I am waking up from a powerful dream, waking up and beholding anew the beauty of my life.