By Abeer Chaudhary

The scenes from those 18 months played in mind on repeat like a broken record. The phone call from my sister, the helplessly put-together care packages, the group video chats, the flights back and forth from Chicago, the inkling of hope with each improving scan, the bated breath after a broken hip, the sleepless nights spent in prayer, the heartbreaking family meeting, and then the peace that came with her peace. 

The ironies left a bitter taste in my mouth. She used to say she didn’t want to die behind the microscope. Instead, she died underneath it. She buried her mom when she was a medical student. I buried mine a month after taking my own board exam. These uncanny parallels colored my future bleak. 

I can’t bring myself to say “I miss her” aloud. Certainly, not to my father. How can I throw that in his face when I know he feels her loss more keenly than her children? For those 18 months, he drove her to her appointments, cooked all her meals, cleaned up after her, flew with her to MD Anderson (twice), and remained the most hopeful out of us despite knowing how this was going to end. 

I’ll never forget the look in his eyes after her last oncology appointment. He kept looking at her as though she was going to evaporate right in front of him. We had finished out another Ramadan and Eid in good spirits despite the COVID-19 lockdown, but I could feel the atmosphere shift abruptly. I didn’t push for details that day as it was the week of my boards. I knew they wouldn’t tell me until after I completed them. That’s just how Desi parents are.

Feigning ignorance to perpetuate the façade of bliss was all I could do in the meantime. The day after boards, however, is still the worst day of my life.

Mets in previously unaffected organs. Lab values off the charts. A clinical trial chemo agent that could cause intracranial bleeding. The worst part is that she was willing to continue. 

She felt obligated.

For us. 

Although we all knew her treatment had been strictly palliative, it still came as a shock to see the actual end of the line. Of course, we could see it physically. It took two of us to lift her up. She had no appetite to intake any nutrients. A yellowish hue finally began to take up residence in her eyes and skin. 

My siblings, who were at more advanced stages in their medical training, thankfully took the reigns. “You don’t have to do anything. You can remain comfortable at home.” At the height of a new pandemic of uncertain duration, the thought of her being in a hospital alone with no visitors would have crushed our spirits altogether. Our acceptance and support were the reassurance she needed to step back.

So, we agreed to stop and to let nature take its course, which it did fairly quickly.

The remaining days passed in warm embraces, life lessons, quiet contemplation, Netflix binges, and gradually worsening encephalopathy. Her sharp-as-a-knife mind dulled into a mere butter knife. I’m still unsure whether it was foretelling or foreboding when she mistook 20-something year old me for our 70-something year old president, but I digress.

The night her death became imminent, all four of us bunked around her bed and took turns to get up and administer morphine to calm her death rattle. By the next morning, the rattling stopped. 

Her lungs had taken their last breath. Her heart had taken its last beat. Her soul had exited this world forever.

Although the sorrow was deep, the impact of the blow was cushioned in my mind as I already mourned her obtunded state. The physical loss almost seemed insignificant in comparison to the cognitive.

As per Islamic tradition, she was buried the same day after the women of our family performed her ghusl. Her headstone, which would be delivered several weeks later, had carvings of birds because they made her happy. Knowing that made us happy.

The postmortem period involved a recalibration of sorts that was both unfamiliar and instinctual. My father bursting into tears and hugging me when I found out I passed my first set of boards was not the reaction I expected. When the leave of absence ended and it was time for us to return to our respective school/jobs, anxiety was at an all-time high. How would a full-time caregiver react to being alone? Our preventative approach led us to the animal shelter. Enter Alpine, a green-eyed goofy feline who managed to partially fill a void with her warm cuddles and silly antics.

The void never really does get smaller. Its proportion shrinks as other joys fill the space around it, but it remains there as a reminder of what once was. You don’t remain the same, but why would you? Experiencing the brevity of mortality is incredibly humbling. To live in the same attitude would be a disservice to those who have come and gone. 

There is not a day that goes by where she doesn’t cross my mind in some form or fashion. The lessons I’ve gleaned from her life and death hover in the back of my mind, and I often ask myself “WWHD: What Would Humera do?” We don’t think of adult children needing their parents in the same way young children do, but I have felt the need for that guidance so keenly in my twenties. The apparent absence during major life events still causes tears to well up in my eyes for a moment, but it is often followed by a smile when I reminisce on how much love I got to know and continue to experience. It is a privilege to carry it forward. 

This has allowed me to lift the tonearm and let the broken record stop playing. It is time to listen to something new.  

Abeer Chaudhary, D.O., is a resident physician at the UAMS Northwest Campus.

By Ana Rodriguez Rivera

I was in the emergency room, scrolling through Facebook when I came across Anthony Adams in the bright yellow suit (Meme_Insurgent). I’m convinced that the creator of the image was reaching out to me, reminding me to radically accept the facts of life. The problem: life’s truths are not always pleasant. We often don’t like them. Nevertheless, the goal is to accept the good and the bad with the same level of tenacity. Your dog died? Radically accept. Lost your wallet? Radically accept. Fallen in love? Radically accept. It’s a skill that’s easy to understand, but hard to practice. For me, the hardest parts of life to accept are those that result in uncertainty. As children, we aren’t taught how to handle uncertainty. All the books my teachers read to me had clear outcomes. Eventually, I gained the skill to predict the endings of some stories. Knowing what to expect prepared me for a conclusion and gave me a sense of closure. I could move on with the satisfaction that all had been resolved. Not knowing, not being able to foresee what happens next, and most importantly, not being able to prepare for it—ambiguity—simply scares me to the core. I wonder: is it possible to radically accept the randomness of life? If so, how can it be done? I laughed out loud as I savored the darkness of the meme, startling the person next to me. I was alone, suffering from breathing problems, with only Anthony to comfort me.

Early one March morning—a Monday to be exact—I put on my blue Walmart vest and made my way to work. I was running late. The morning had been crisp, so I’d been forced to spend some time defrosting the windshield of my little Chevy Spark. In my rush to clock in and prepare my register for the day, I failed to notice the agitation in the air. Suspicion hit me when I spotted a flock of managers huddled at the front of the store. Such a rare phenomenon—Walmart higher-ups so easily accessible—is not to be taken lightly. My coworkers became restless. Their voices buzzed back and forth with urgency as they talked to one another. I finally glanced over at the register to my left. “Hey, do you know what’s going on?”

My coworker shook her head and answered, “They’re saying the schools are going to shut down early.”

Later that day, Governor Hutchinson ordered the immediate closure of all public schools. I’d heard about COVID-19 on the news, but it had seemed so distant, so far away. Suddenly, it was at our doorstep, and it was not going away. When the news broke, the tension in the store erupted into chaos. My coworkers were frantically calling their spouses and family members— What’re we going to do about the kids? — Can you pick up so-and-so from school? The phone vibrated in my pocket. My husband: They are closing the office for a few days. I think something major is going on with this virus. Out of nowhere, the store overflowed with nervous customers. Shopping carts full of groceries lined the aisles. I must have scanned more items that day than I ever had during my time there.

Rumors spread that the Governor planned on shutting down businesses and other public spaces. Health officials were sending warnings about the rapid spread of the virus. I remember looking at the bottle of Germ X next to my register with a sudden sense of hopelessness. At some point, I found myself heading towards the breakroom at the back of the store. I walked past aisle after aisle of empty shelves. I stopped to watch one shopper load multiple cases of water into his cart. For the first time, many of us came face-to-face with what British author Thomas Hardy called “[t]he Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything.” COVID-19 urged many of us into a jarring unease. The virus reminded us that fate—the “Immanent Will”—plays a large part in the trajectory of our lives, despite how certain we felt about them. W.H. Auden aptly dubbed the nineteenth century the “Age of Anxiety.” Many poets and novelists during this time grappled with a swiftly changing world. Some, like Hardy, also reflected on a higher power, an invisible force, that inexplicably drives the world. In the poem, “Anything Can Happen,” written in 2004, Irish author Seamus Heaney writes, “Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter / Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head / Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now / He galloped his thunder cart and his horses” (lines 1-4). Heaney wrote this poem in response to the shocking events of 9/11 in the United States. Heaney describes the randomness of the attacks and contemplates the higher being responsible for such devastation. Although I don’t remember much about that day, I’ve learned a lot about it through documentaries and news stories.

I remember reading a story one year on the anniversary of the tragedy. The vice president of an insurance company heading to his office on the ninety-sixth floor of the World Trade Center made an impromptu stop at the post office. He took longer than he’d thought and was slightly behind schedule. When he arrived at the subway station, the train he normally took was at capacity, and he had to take a different route. All these incidents made the man unusually late for work. When he finally arrived, he learned that the Boeing 767 had crashed into his office building. This story captivates me enormously. When I first heard it, I was awed that a man could be so lucky. However, reflecting on Hardy’s philosophy about the “Immanent Will,” a few things occur to me. Although fate and chance are often associated with destruction, pain, and sorrow, they are also linked to miracles and “lucky” circumstances, as the man’s extraordinary story shows. Perhaps the first step to radically accepting uncertainty is acknowledging that nothing is certain—not even the negative and frightening things our minds tell us could happen.

The only thing we know for sure is that “[a]nything can happen.”
Sure, anything can happen, but how do we cope with the ambiguity of it?
Thinking back on the pandemic’s worst years, what strikes me as remarkable is how people coped with the bleakness of it all. I recall the smorgasbord of morbidly funny COVID-19 memes amid the news of death, global economic distress, and leadership failures. Internet memes have always been one of my generation’s finest talents. As a creative endeavor, memes are easy to create since there are no strict conventions to follow. We use memes to mass share bits of information—cultural symbols, themes, and ideas—without much effort. Some people may findpandemic memes callous. However, it’s important to consider one thing: in one of the most difficult moments in history, people turned their distress and anxiety into witty, creative pieces. Authentic representations of life’s darkest qualities laced with a touch of humor makes for a rather therapeutic tonic. Dark humor—my generation’s way of mustering through even the direst of situations.

The dark humor of pandemic-era internet memes recalls Hardy’s ability to render dark humor in his own work more than a century earlier. He wrote “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?” in 1913. In the poem, Hardy juxtaposes humor with grim reality. The narrator attempts to identify the person disturbing her grave. She naively assumes it’s the people she left behind; ironically, the final answer comes from her beloved dog: “‘Mistress, I dug upon your grave / To bury a bone… / I am sorry, but I quite forgot / It was your resting-place’” (lines 31-36). I held back a chuckle when I first read this poem. I detected an endearing irony in the poem that I’d found in the pandemic memes. The poem is a reminder that death remains true for us all and that even our furry companions may forget us. Some readers may find such a dire message discouraging, but I think Hardy gives us a different outlook, one that engenders laughter in the face of gloom. Instead of buckling under the heavy burden of uncertainty, fear, and despondency, Hardy, like the pandemic meme creators, found ways to wrest creativity, inspiration, and even humor from unfortunate circumstances.

Although some consider Hardy a great pessimist, he always struck me as a man that observed the world as it was—ironic, sometimes cruel, and largely uncertain. There’s an admirable quality in his ability to write matter-of-factly about these issues. It’s almost as if through writing, Hardy found a way to accept the perversity of fate and the volatility of life.There’s a fearlessness that inspires poems like “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?” I suppose this approach has always drawn me to his work.

I first encountered Hardy in my final year as an undergraduate. My mentor and longtime friend, Dr. Kay Walter, agreed to let me take one of her courses as an independent study. On the reading list was Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1896). Both Jude Fawley’s tragic story and Hardy’s lyricism impacted me immensely. I often think about one passage from the novel: “As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering…” I didn’t quite understand Hardy’s message back then as well as I do now. As a child, I perceived life as a predetermined sequence of big moments. At some point, I was going to lose my first tooth, get my driver’s license, graduate high school, and continue the expected path along the circle. However, the older I get, the more it all becomes murky. Within the past couple of years, I’ve become more aware of the lack of direction in my life. It truly feels like I’m standing at the center of my time, looking at what has already passed, but unable to see what is to come. Unlike Hardy, I have not figured out a way to handle the uncertainty in my life. Like any good scholar, I continue to look for instruction in the books that I read.

About reading, Siri Husvedt writes, “The more I read, the more I change. The more varied my reading, the more I am to perceive the world from myriad perspectives.” No matter how diverse my reading lists are each semester, I find that many of the writers I study tackle the same issues and concerns, but in their own way. For example, Latina author, Carmen Maria Machado, writes about the uncertainty in her life in her memoir In the Dream House (2019). Machado experiences instability and random violence due to her abusive girlfriend. She makes it clear that writing helps her cope with her trauma. In one chapter, she contemplates the end of the world: “A theory about the end of everything: the heat death of the universe. Entropy will take over and matter will scatter and nothing will be anymore.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “entropy” is: “A state of or tendency towards disorder…” When things are in order, we feel a sense of security. Disorder leads to uncertainty. Like Hardy, Machado works through the volatility in her life brought on by disorder. She, too, finds a way to radically accept her circumstances. Hardy and Machado—two vastly different writers—both offer strategies for surviving life’s randomness. The more entropic our world becomes, the more I agree with Husvedt’s advice. Reading can change us. Additionally, diversifying our reading offers ample knowledge for devising our own form of acceptance. There’s hope, then, that living with uncertainty can be done.

Is it possible to radically accept the randomness of life? Unfortunately, I can’t google the answer to this question. As I’ve battled with uncertainty, I’ve learned that my biggest barrier is fear. I have a chilling terror of blind spots, muddy waters, and the unknown. One thing is certain: I’m grateful that the writers I’ve encountered have shown me the possibilities. Arundhati Roy asserts, “We have to reach within ourselves and find the strength to think. To fight.” The starting point is confronting my fear. When I reflect on Hardy’s work, I realize that what I admire most is his ability to challenge the hopelessness that uncertainty brings. His courage garnered poems and novels that provide me with clarity. The strength to reach within ourselves and find the means to fight is both an individual and collective process. My journey is uniquely mine, but I find myself reaching out for support, and I find that I rely on others—Hardy and Machado, for example—to help me get through it.

In their own search for answers, others look to the mundane tasks in our lives. For example, in the essay “Driving as Metaphor,” published in 2019, Rachel Cusk observes, “Trying to unravel these snarl-ups, it often becomes clear that many of its participants are unable fully to manoeuvre and control the cars they are driving. Others struggle to adapt to the change of circumstance and to the necessity for acting as a group.” Cusk presents a solution that best portrays what I mean by “collective process.” Cusk uses the metaphor of driving to explain the intensely complicated problems that arise in our lives. Periodically, we find ourselves tangled in chaos and many of us fail to overcome it alone. Cusk emphasizes the need for collective action. Problem-solving becomes a collaborative endeavor. And so, unashamedly, I turn to Hardy and others for answers. As I reflect on the radical acceptance of uncertainty, I have become keenly aware that the books and poems I’ve read inform my understanding of these concerns. Gradually, I sense a change within me.

When I think back on the pandemic, it’s hard to believe that somehow, we made it. The day Governor Hutchinson closed the schools, I remember going home to watch the news. As the global reports poured in, a cold, stony fear settled in the pit of my stomach. And yet, I somehow managed to get out of bed every morning. Somehow, I kept going. So many of us did. Among the dark memories of that time are jewels: Hugging my mother and father for the first time after months of quarantining; my husband making popcorn as we settled in for another quiet movie night; honeymooning in Chicago after the travel ban and feeling like the luckiest people in the world. Life has always been a hodgepodge of chance and fate. From Hardy’s time to the present, we’ve endured and survived despite the instability of our world. We remember that although chance and fate might bring great sorrow, it also brings us miracles. We take comfort in knowing that it’s possible to find humor and joy even in the bleakest situations. At times, it feels like I’m stuck in a place of fear and anxiety, but I am optimistic that one day, I’ll find peace despite the chaos. For now, I’ll keep turning to my books in search of answers.

Works Cited

• “Entropy, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/63009.
• Meme_Insurgent. “Pandemic!” March 2021. https://www.memedroid.com/memes/detail/2912669/Pandemic.

Ms. Ana Rodriguez Rivera is a research writer at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.