Research Shows: A Narrative of Teaching and Learning

"I remember it was like a story,"
Rampal said on the radio.
"He told you the Beethoven concerto."
I am telling you cancer.

—Hilda Raz, "Isaac Stern's Performance" ¹

Tuesday, September 2, 1997: The Support Group

Carly, her infant sitting on her lap, was mid-sentence when Terry burst through the door, all noise with a one-year-old in tow. The group had already begun, each parent (usually a mother) detailing the most recent events in the children's lives. Carly had just shifted from talking about Luke, her four-year-old, to discussing her husband's addiction to smoking.

"I just know Luke's going to try a cigarette when he gets older," Carly said. "He won't remember any of this, and I'll want to shake him. . . . His father smokes, so he sees it at home. . . ."

"I'm trying to quit, too," muttered another mother. "With everything that's been going on . . . it's just really hard. . . ."

"He can quit; you can too," Terry declared as she pulled a chair up to the table. "If he really wants to, he'll quit. A while after Jenny was diagnosed, I went outside to smoke. When I came back in the house, Jenny started to cough, I mean, hack, really hacking. You know that residual nicotine in your clothes and hair? It's just secondhand smoke to the kids, that's all it is. So I quit. That day. Never had another cigarette. You can do it," she continued. "I mean, what's the point of going through all this if you're just going to poison your kids again? Poison 'em. That's what you're doing, you know? You're poisoning 'em."

"Well," I started, mostly to myself, "a lot of research shows . . ." I had intended to say something about the additives in cigarettes that make them more addictive; something to let Carly off the hook and to signal that I thought it inappropriate to lecture these women here and now on the perils of smoking or living with a smoker. But before I could get my thoughts together and raise my voice, someone from the corner of the room asked, "How is Jenny?"

"Oh my God, you guys, it's. . . ." Terry started over: "Jenny . . . she's bad. We're just . . . I don't know . . . waiting, I guess. They said there's nothing more they can do. And we . . . well, we brought her home." Her voice trailed off and then, in a much higher pitch, she asked, "Do you think this is crazy? We do what we can. And those hospice people, don't get me started! 'Don't feed her,' they tell me. 'You're only prolonging it. You're making it worse by not giving her permission to die.' I finally told them to get the hell out of my house. And now we take care of her all by ourselves. What are we supposed to do? She and I made her funeral arrangements together, for God's sake. She knows she's dying. I think she'll die when she's ready. I don't force things down her throat. She can't eat, but she has this nutrition drink and some medicine to help with digestion and pain. I'll go in and say, 'Jenny, it's time to take your medicine.' And sometimes she'll say, 'Aw, Mom, I don't want to take it.' And then I say, 'That's fine. It's your choice. I'll leave it here in case you change your mind.' And then she'll say, 'Oh, give me that!'"

The room was still.

"My husband and I," Terry started up again, "we're believers. We read the Book of Job. We know God has a purpose for us and for Jenny. We know that He must have something He needs her to do up there and that we'll all be together again...