Honor Thy Daughter (Review of the book by Marilyn Howell)

Honor Thy Daughter is the story of a mother and daughter’s journey through cancer. The daughter (Mara) has a highly aggressive colon cancer. Her mother (Marilyn) is the primary caregiver and the chronicler – what a time, what a terrible journey they had!

Mara

This was difficult to write. I felt that I should truly honor this book, these people, these truths. I hope that I have, to some extent. In the end, I used Marilyn’s words.

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Mara experiences the reality of some cancers: one treatment failure after another and symptoms, especially pain, uncontrolled for the most part. The physical disease is exacerbated by Mara’s difficulties in accepting the realities she is facing – she fights the disease, the dying, the realities of being young and beautiful and dying. Her mother supports her in this and in all Mara’s other responses to the disease. Both mother and daughter hope against hope that the cancer will be cured or at least slowed. To these ends, Mara tries virtually every treatment she is offered or can find – mainstream and alternative. Nothing works. The cancer progresses and the symptoms worsen. It’s a hard road. There are respites, but the direction (toward the end of life) remains the same.

I experienced this as a difficult book. The valley of the shadow of death is a tough place. For me, personally there was an eerie sameness in Mara’s experience and the year and few months I spent taking Phana to chemo and other appointments. Phana and Mara’s tumors (primary colon) were basically the same, as were their ages and the progression of the disease. Hours and hours and hours in the infusion room, waiting rooms, exam rooms, the car… But of course, Phana wasn’t my daughter.

I don’t recall if Marilyn ever says this directly, but it seems to me that what she was doing was practicing a radical acceptance of her daughter’s path through cancer – fully supporting Mara’s every decision. “It wasn’t until I returned home that I realized how much fear and grief I had been holding in check. I stepped into my house, shut the door, and screamed” (p. 52).

150 pages into the book, with the cancer spread to lungs, liver, and elsewhere; with pain uncontrolled; with nausea, vomiting, and other GI problems worsening; with weight loss and weakness increasing, with despair… Mara and her mother connect with a man (“Allan”) who is able to give Mara accurate doses of MDMA. She takes MDMA several times and each time she experiences clarity, relief from pain (the first relief since the cancer began progressing), and the return of appetite. But the symptoms return after the drug wears off. She also uses marijuana and LSD, both of which help, but still, the symptoms return. Finally…

“On Saturday morning, September 10th, it was nearly impossible to awaken her. Finally, at midday, she was alert enough for me to ask her if she wanted to take MDMA. Mara mustered all her strength to say yes before returning to her restless sleep – gasping for breath and moaning… I put a tablet under her tongue.

Her breathing gradually steadied and her body grew peaceful…

David stroked Mara’s hair as I read (from This Timeless Moment by Laura Huxley). Those words, my voice, and her father’s caress told Mara that we accepted her passing, that her death could be noble, and that she was not alone.

All at once she began to move. She took her right hand from beneath the covers, reached across to place it in her father’s palm, lifted her chin, opened her eyes, and turned her head toward him. She was radiant. In that moment, she was beautiful again. With her last breath she conveyed the rapture of her being, life’s final gift to her, and her final gift to us.”

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And we live and we breathe and we have our being (Van Morrison).

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Marilyn Howell, 2011. Honor Thy Daughter. MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). Note that MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and marijuana are being given to people with terminal illness and despair in research studies at Harvard, NYU, USC, and other institutions.