Finding Temporary Shelter in the Mundane

In some cases, choosing the mundane can be life-giving, help salve emotional hurts and anchor our lives.

Life as I knew it had gone out the window.

I had already spent six months dealing with my cancer diagnosis. I had undergone tests, completed oral chemo, finished radiation and had a four-in-one cancer surgery. I thought I was on the other side of the treatments but it was still too early to tell if they’d been helpful in eradicating the cancer from my body.

I was hoping for some good news.

Choosing the mundane can be life-giving.

I headed toward the cancer center to see my oncologist. After reviewing my charts and labs, he told me he wanted me to start a six-month round of drip chemo treatments as soon as possible. The news hit me like a surprise left hook punch. I thought I was on the other side of treatments. I felt like the room was closing in on me; I struggled to breathe; my attempts to fight back the tears were useless.

In the car on the way home, I weighed the option of possibly refusing chemotherapy or at least postponing chemo for two weeks so that I could visit my family in southern Illinois before launching into the grueling regimen.

I was familiar with the kind of data with which my oncologist was working. I also knew how important emotional health and well-being were to survival odds. Living well—enjoying the people and places that had always been life-giving—was one choice I could make for good.

I decided to begin treatments after returning from visiting family.

Mundane moments help salve emotional hurts.

It felt wonderfully ā€œnormalā€ to be with family for meals, to eat familiar food, to play familiar board games, and to see my relatives, like I had done so many times before.

And though I could still barely walk I went with a family member to the movies. Standing in line for the Sprite and popcorn, I was grateful that—excluding the pain I felt with every step I took and the inflatable yellow donut pillow I’d smuggled in to sit on. This was the only way I could withstand the pain from sitting for more than five minutes because of my surgery.

I had almost forgot what it was like to go to a movie. The sweet fragrance of warm buttered popcorn wafted throughout the theater. What could be more normal than that?

Though for many this would qualify as a relatively boring night out, it was nice to feel a little like me again, though brief and fleeting.

The mundane helps anchor our lives.

When I was first diagnosed, I felt like my life was already over.

Cancer threatened to change everything I cherished. It swept through my life like a hurricane, damaging my health, emotions, security, relationships, work and peace of mind. But I’d also begun to notice that some of the most solid places in the storm I was weathering were familiar experiences I’d taken for granted.

During the storm, the mundane often brought me closer to others and back to myself, and served as a temporary refuge at that point in my cancer journey. Engaging in the mundane helped me see I was loved fiercely. Even the mundane familiarity of a movie theater seemingly offered much needed reprieve. Embracing these experiences had been like finding temporary shelter on dry ground as the storm waters began to rise once again.