Relationships: Some Deepen, Some Do Not
By
Leonard Zwelling
One of the first things you try to do as a kid when you move to a new place, is to find new friends. At least that was my experience in 1956 when I moved from Stratford, Connecticut to North Bellmore, Long Island, New York. (You actually had to write all that on an envelope mailed to North Bellmore from sleep away camp in 1959.) Then, as you enter school, you acquire more friends and this goes on throughout your life. Or it should.
Then, many of the arenas in which you acquire new acquaintances go away once you stop your school and work life. You retire, your kids go away to school or work and their own lives, and they are no longer a source for meeting new people at PTA meetings, Little League games, and carpool lines. The pace with which you find new friends slows. (A caveat here is that if you yourself move to a new place, you may start the process all over again.) For me, that did not occur. I’m still in the same house, but with no job. I have found that my circle of friends has shrunk a bit, but that is okay. The friendships I have seem deeper, far less superficial.
The same also might happen with family. Some relationships deepen. Some seem evanescent. Airplane trips across the country become harder as one ages. All members of your family, especially those younger than yourself, have their own busy lives, with less time for you. Again, that’s fine. That’s life. That is as it should be.
What has been amazing is that friends that I have had for many years (some over 70 years) are people with whom I can pick up a conversation as if we never ended the last one. There are members of my family who also seem to have always been there, even though many of these people only became my family after I married.
I was very close to my mother-in-law and father-in-law. I miss them both a great deal, surely as much as my own parents who I saw infrequently once they moved to Florida in 1980. I always checked in on them right to their final days. After all, I was a doctor and expected to know how to explain all of the ailments of their later years. In fact, MD Anderson helped both of my parents in those later years as I facilitated elements of their care that were a bit beyond what was available in Florida.
These relationships that you have with parents and siblings should last a lifetime. Unfortunately, illness can intervene. Theirs and yours. But you try as hard as you can to hang on to those long-term relationships if you are able.
I have found it a bit easier to do so with my friends than with my family. Perhaps my friends of long standing are a bit less demanding. Perhaps the trust is a given because it was earned. Perhaps there are no axes to grind.
I don’t know why my relationships with friends seem easier than the ones with family. Perhaps there is less baggage. Perhaps there is less mishigas with friends than there is with family. I am still struggling with all of this.
But perhaps the real truth is that I am profoundly not the person my family thought they knew. I am not even the person I thought I knew. I sometimes do a thought experiment wondering what kind of a physician (let alone an oncologist) I might be now compared to the person who was a physician back then, 40 or 50 years ago. I think I could listen more now. I think my empathy would be greater. I think each patient would be more of a person to me than another patient with a disease to diagnose and treat.
I know that I was never that kind of a great bedside manner doctor. I was a pretty good internist and an adequate oncologist, but I really did not have the aptitude needed to be a real physician. Thus, I think my relationships with my patients, whether it be the poor out-patients at Duke Hospital or the upper- class patients who were the mainstay of the Medicine Branch at the National Cancer Institute were ultimately superficial. I have found the people who have cared for me as a patient have been far better at their relationships with me than I was as a doctor with my patients.
This realization has now allowed me to be a better conduit for patients seeking help at Anderson. I consider such calls for help of the highest importance and of great urgency. I know how I feel as a patient seeking my own care and do my best to help every person who seeks access to MD Anderson.
Relationships are funny. At some point in your life you have many, some superficial, some profound. Many come. Many go. A few really good ones stay. I treasure the ones I have now more than ever. I do mourn the loss of some that are no longer. It’s all part of the journey.
