Ash Wednesday

I used to love Ash Wednesday, before I got cancer. Ash Wednesday always stood out to me as special. Apart from Good Friday, it’s pretty much the only day in the church calendar when not all is warm fuzzies and joy eternal. Ash Wednesday is sad. Ash Wednesday is real. It’s one of those very rare occasions when church not only allows us to be a little sad, but in fact encourages it.

I always loved that, because life is profoundly sad sometimes. People die. We all will die someday, every single one of us. We don’t remember that enough, and Ash Wednesday gives us an important reminder of the frailty and futility of material pursuits. Ash Wednesday is also a day in which pretenses of well-being are set aside and it’s alright to be flawed and mortal. On Ash Wednesday, Christianity can’t be abused to make false promises of health and wealth and every good thing in this life. On Ash Wednesday, we’re encouraged to remember that life is fleeting. I think that’s great.

I just don’t personally feel much of a need for it anymore.

I know I’m made of all-too fragile dust. I’m well aware that I’ll return to such before long. I haven’t been to an Ash Wednesday service since I got diagnosed over three years ago. Partly by default, since I’ve just not always been well enough to go to one, and partly I just haven’t wanted to.

If you know my story, you’d probably expect me to talk about my scars and how I don’t need ashes imposed upon my forehead to bear a physical reminder of my mortality. And that’s a good guess; I have over a dozen scars from various surgeries, after all. While they are pretty visible, and while they do remind me how close to death I have been and likely still am, I honestly just don’t notice them that much anymore. I’ve grown so used to them that every so often they genuinely surprise me.

Instead, how I feel is a much more brazen reminder of my mortality. Right now, I’m tired. I’m fatigued. I get light-headed and out of breath really, really easily. When my blood counts are down like they were this past weekend, I have to beware what I eat, who I’m around and if they’re vaccinated and healthy, and how often I wash my hands. Now, as my blood counts recover, I feel a deep aching in my bones as my marrow kicks back into gear. It’s not too intense, but it’s there, enough that I can say with reasonable certainty that my counts are recovering before my bloodwork results come in.

There are plenty of other non-physical reminders too. Heck, I wrote this post in the waiting area at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Pediatric Day Hospital, surrounded by a dozen other cancer patients, most of whom are younger than me. At the time I’m posting this, I’m waiting for the results of yesterday’s PET scan to know what the cancer in me has been up to these last couple months of chemo and immunotherapy. The days in which I feel well enough that I don’t experience multiple physical reminders of my cancer and the parade of treatments I’ve made it through are rare enough that they stand out to me and are themselves reminders too. So I’m intimately and intensely aware that we’re all dying one day at a time. And I could go into a dozen more ways my body sometimes feels like it’s slowly dying because of my cancer and the treatments I’ve needed for it—like mild neuropathy in my hands and feet or the many changes to my intestinal fortitude over the last few years—but you probably get the idea already. In short, each day provides multiple reminders that I’m mortal, that I’m dust. I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death every single day, one way or another.

If that’s true for you, then you probably understand why I don’t feel a need to spend an hour at a church service contemplating my impending death. I live that reality often enough as it is. But if you don’t—if your body’s wellness allows you to forget your mortality, your frailty, your dustiness—then try an Ash Wednesday service. I can’t imagine going through life without an awareness and appreciation of the fleeting nature of life. I wouldn’t want to take living for granted, forgetting to actually live while I can and postponing the important for a tomorrow that may not dawn. I’d rather know that I’m made of dust, and to dust I will soon return.