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Jon's wife Christy got pancreatic cancer ten years ago, but Jon still carries the fear of losing her. It's a long hallway from diagnostics to recovery, but Jon's found the right doctor: Todd helps him stop over-intellectualizing, cutting through the voices in his head, until only sweet remission (from the Latin "to relax,") colors the horizon. Revealed to Jon on the eve of Thanksgiving, 2022, Todd's tongue-in-cheek poem is written in the talky après-dinner-party style of Tony Hoagland, and features candid, ad-libbed cameos by Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Czesław Miłosz, and Raymond Carver, who, like all of us, just wants to be loved. From sorrow to joy and back again, this story lets Christy have the final word, and has Jon breathing a sigh of relief.
Todd's poem for Jon, "Thanksgiving," quotes a stanza of Tony Hoagland's "Among the Intellectuals," from his posthumous collection, Turn Up The Ocean (Graywolf Press). Used with permission.
Chapters in this episode:
- I contain multitudes
- Cancer for Christmas
- Trying to figure things out
- Deconstructing prayer
- Recovery: "She really is okay."
- Humility is an honest self-assessment
- The poem: "Thanksgiving."
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