Marsha Therese Danzig - From the Roots: The True Story of How I Beat Death and Learned to Live

Copyright 2017 by Marsha Therese Danzig

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Jane Sheppard

Cover photo: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1291-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1295-9

Printed in the United States

Dedicated to Faith, Hope, and Love

CONTENTS

C HAPTER 1

Speak. Speak. Speak. You tell your story.

You get that suffering spoken for.

You get that hope out there.

You tell the world how you have won, over and over, and have not succumbed.

This is worthwhile, says He. I trust Him, for once.

Open. Open Open.

Open.

Open.

Open.

Open.

Open.

Open.

The diagnosis is not good, so they say. I am five. It is the sixties. So much death anxiety is associated with that word: cancer. Id never heard of it before. As the adults swarm around me, day in, day out, kiddie-gloving their way around the little girl (or muscle), mounting my will, I vaguely sense that I am very seriously not well.

A life-size clown doll is propped up in the hospital bed next to beaming, smiling me. The two of us sit. Our smiles are real. What do I know?

I know cancer only has meaning because someone gave it meaning. And so it goes, my lifetime of overwhelm, tension, and extreme holding to stay away from, divert attention from, please God keep me from, cancer. I still dont know what it really means.

I receive bedloads of presents for something I must have done.

Oh, I know! I have cancer!

How did I get from hospital beds to this moment? I have some idea but I leave that up to God to tell me someday.

Accept This.

A pearl dropped from heaven

The earth opened up and swallowed her whole

And when shed had her fill of sustaining and nurturing

She loosened her grip

The pearl walked the earth

Each bare footstep

Echoed

Dont forget. Dont forget. Dont ever forget!

C HAPTER 2

There is no separation from the love of God.

I will prune you, cultivate you, water you. This will be hard. Behold you are gold in the palm of my hand.

Belief always starts in the body.

Before Christmas, I found the presents. I sat among them, wrapping paper piled high above my tiny head. I kept a few of the dolls, even though I knew they were for my sister. I cut their hair. Pure delight.

Children didnt come over much after the diagnosis. I continued to have a habit of playing beauty shop. Little girls with long, bright blond curls would be dropped off. Mothers came to pick them up; the same little girls bounding to the door, excited about their new hairdo. I wanted them to look like me.

When I returned to school in the middle of first grade, a girl lost her contact lens. I did not know what a contact lens was. I only knew it was slightly invisible. How would they find the invisible? She had a problem, like me, only I was all better. The teacher treated me delicately. I was separate. And special.

I met love in the mirror

I stepped forward just 10, then 20, then 3,000 feet

I touched my hand to the flame and I was not burned

This is Gratitude

To look into the mirror

See Death

And reflect back resurrection

This is knowledge

To look in the mirror

And see only Christ

This is suffering

To turn your back

From the mirror

C HAPTER 3

Life is too short

Dress Up

Eleanor had very nice clothing, so one day I walked to her apartment. The door was open, but no one was inside. I grabbed as many items as my five-year-old body could drag down the stairs and ran back to my house. For hours I stood in my backyard trying on her clothes, pretending to be her. I hid the pile from my mother, who brought me orange slices. I wore the orange slices like lipstick, the juice oozing down Eleanors exquisite dresses and tiny white lace blouses. Her parents came to collect the goods eventually. I never felt bad about what I had done. I had a right to look pretty, too.

Eleanor moved out of her apartment. A blond hippie moved in. I started going to her house to learn songs by Mary Hopkin and Joni Mitchell. She gave me an Apple 45 rpm record. My dachshund chewed it, but I played it anyway. No one knew I went to the hippies apartment after school. I was in second grade. The whole school was looking for me. My mother was looking for me. I moseyed on home around four on a Thursday afternoon. I had my own life to lead.

Heave

Go by inner flow

Whisper medicine of

Love, Rhythm, Soul

Beneath a laugh full of remedy

Look through winter dream

Night mind

Use your beauty

Black cocktail gown

Truth bed

Bella red

C HAPTER 4

This childhood is blurry. I dont remember much.

Who my first grade teacher was,

what my classmates names were, what I learned in kindergarten.

I remember

The blades of grass.

This one sat in the front seat of the station wagon on Cambridge Road.

Somehow the car was turned on, but the blade could not steer.

This blade swung on the backyard swings when Father Joe met her for the first time.

Now she knew what truly handsome was.

This blade sipped iced coffee from her fathers cup.

This blade did a lot of ungodly manner-free activities that embarrassed numerous adults.

This blade rode on the back of her calico cat, Holly.

This blade turned the pink plastic crown of the dancing doll. Hoping against hope.

This blade touched the sticky pine trees near her house.

This blade sat complacent, coloring, on her grandmothers front porch.

Rims of sadness surround pain and fear.

Worry, seeded in large clumps, moves in its own direction, away from the flow.

It is hard work to find the blades of joy, laughter, hilarity, lightness, peace, contentment, happiness, love. But I always do.

I have often coated each sorry blade with the cloak of fierce hope.

So I could own my own happiness after every broken moment.

I step back.

If He can walk through it with wide open heart,