Rosalind Russell

Sheila, in yet another excerpt from her (wonderfully) overstuffed bookshelves, covers Rosalind Russell's autobiography today.

Sadly, Roz died of breast cancer.  Her autobiography was published after her death, and her husband wrote the prologue to the book. :

After she died I found a petition she had tucked away in her prayer book. It said in part, "Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by."

While  I doubt she meant for anyone to read that, that struck me as pretty damn good advice for those of us who have to deal with health issues. 

People often wonder how they should treat those who are very ill, or are battling with a disease.  They worry a lot about making a wrong move, bringing up a delicate subject, or offending their friend/loved one to the point where the relationship is irretrevably broken.  I think people worry too much about this.  All anyone needs to know when chatting with someone who is ill is not to ignore the big, fat, pink elephant that's sitting in the middle of the living room, but to simply treat their ill friend/loved one like they did before they were sick.  That's all I wanted. I wanted Mr. H., when he came to visit me in the hospital, to joke and chat, and not see me be unable to eat any food, or take water, or to fall asleep in midsentence.  I was so pleased when he was able to help me walk around the hospital floor.  I had to get out of bed, to move, to heal, it was part of the bargain, and I needed him and the husband to help hold me up as I walked to the nurse's station and back.  I was pleased I was able to be normal in front of him, even though the situation was patently abnormal.  

Yet, on the flipside, ill people have to remind themselves, often, that most people just don't want to hear about it, particularly if you're of the chatty variety, and aren't possessed of a John Wayne-like sense of stoicism, like myself.   You may want to talk, but they probably don't want to listen---well, not after the first few times, anyway.  You learn that, even though you may want to answer honestly when a friend asks you how you're doing, you'll simply say, "I'm fine," even if you aren't, to enable them to work around the big, fat, pink elephant---your illness---in the room.  If you want them to treat you normally, you will enable your friends and family to do that.  It's the classy thing to do, and Rosalind Russell knew that it was also a hard thing to do: she prayed for help in doing it.  You're focused on the maladies and the pain they've caused you and the struggle sometimes becomes omnipresent in your head, but your friends and your family members---and, most importantly, your spouse---don't need to hear all about it.  Rosalind, bless her soul, undoubtedly, was seeking a bit of normality, but I'm sure was also trying to make the burden lighter for her much loved husband, who had to see her deteriorate from the lovely, vibrant woman she was.

Yet, everyone handles finding the normality differently.  For some people it means ignoring the obvious.  For others, it means taking off the kid gloves.  Take Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner, for instance.  After her death, Wilder later recounted that she was a pretty whiny patient, that something was always wrong, that she was terribly spoiled, and could be petulant and unfair at times.  He didn't want to argue with her because she was sick, and he knew it was the illness that was causing her to be this way, but, after letting it slide a few times, he decided he wasn't going to let her get away with it, and he blew up at her.  She thanked him for it.  She said, something like,  'See?  I must not be dying.  You wouldn't argue with me if you thought I was dying.'

Besides, being sick---you know, after the inital drama of the diagnosis---is boring.  It's a life sucking drudge of an experience.  Why bore other people with it?   If they're leading productive, happy lives, let them get on with it, instead of dragging them down.  While they want to be a friend to you, to hear you, you have to be just as much of a friend to them, by shutting the hell up.