PhDr. Mgr. Jeroným Klimeš, Ph.D.
2017-10-26
English translation of the
original article in Czech: DeepL
"Klimeš is blaspheming!" That’s what people say when I claim that "a breakup is worse than cancer." I understand that it sounds unbelievable, but essentially, these are just the results of a 50-year-old study. According to that research, people who have experienced both a breakup and a serious illness say that the breakup (the loss of a loved one) was worse than the illness. The study was conducted by Holmes and Rahe(*) and published just 9 days after I was born (even those slackers could have hurried up a bit). But when you see how it plays out in real life, you don’t even have to go through either of those experiences to agree with them.
The little girl on the right in the following photo, wearing a turquoise T-shirt, is our daughter. Pavlík was the boy closest to her(*). The whole thing is a shot of our children’s favorite toy at the family scouting camp. It was the so-called “mud engine”(*) — a source of amazing educational power. It was as simple as it was genius. You just take two buckets of slow water from the Ploužnice River(*), pour them into the sand, and the kids can happily play in the resulting mud for three hours. Not even the ropeway was that successful, and what a hassle it was to build! Ungrateful little rascals! (Evolutionary toys are activities that children enjoyed in our evolutionary past, such as a sandbox. That’s why they hold greater appeal for children than the aforementioned ropeway.)
At that time, Pavlík’s parents weren’t divorced yet. That came later, with all the drama: the battle for the kids, joint custody, hatred on all sides. The whole scout troop and the entire village eventually split into two groups — those on Dad’s side and those on Mom’s side. The boys shuttled back and forth between Mom’s and Dad’s. It’s probably pointless to speculate whether this was a result of the divorce or not — no one can really say for sure — but Pavlík was diagnosed with lung cancer this spring(*). You know how it goes — suddenly a nasty lump on his neck. They ran from doctor to doctor — biopsies, radiation, chemotherapy. Cimrman’s cycle of hope and despair(*), until Pavlík died in September. His mother was with him. His father didn’t want to go to the hospital...
The Scouts organized a grand farewell ceremony; the mayor spoke, at least two hundred people came, and balloons with messages were released into the sky for Pavlík in that touching moment. Yes, it would all have been beautiful, if not for one small catch. Pavlik’s body was missing. His father was taking it to Moravia at that time, where Pavlik was to have a second funeral — without his brother, without his mother, without his friends... Even in death, Pavlik had no peace from his parents break-up war.
The second of the brothers remained, also the one closest to Pavlík in the photograph. Hmm... How many kilograms of the surviving son’s body weight belong to the mother and how many to the father? Who will decide this? Is there anyone at all who could decide this? What do you think? No? But yes, there is a judge who will decide this, and whom the parents themselves have already chosen.
When I was little, I perceived the following quote from Jesus as unnecessarily harsh: “You have heard that it was said to the fathers, ‘You shall not murder! Whoever kills will be brought to trial.’ [a reference to the Ten Commandments — ‘You shall not murder’] But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be brought to trial; whoever insults his brother will be brought before the council; and whoever condemns his brother will be condemned to the fiery hell.”
It was only when faced with the breakups that I understood this is true literally and without exaggeration. Why will anyone who is angry with his brother be brought before the court? Because he goes around to everyone and demands that they agree with him. Likewise, both parents now want their remaining son to agree with them. Everyone — not just the son — is ultimately forced to choose either the mother or the father. Everyone, including the father’s brother, Pavlík’s uncle, must decide whether to attend the mother’s or the father’s funeral. In other words — the judges have already been summoned, and the parents have been, are, and will be judged. Even the remaining son will ultimately pass judgment, for he is the last one allowed to remain neutral. At least one of the parents will thus lose their second son as well. They will be condemned and fall into the fiery hell of helpless, gnawing rage, for they have been calling for it for many years. I do not wish this upon the parents; I am merely telling them — just as the Old Testament prophets foretold the fall of Jerusalem. They foresaw it, but there was nothing they could do about it.
So what was sadder about Pavlík’s story — his cancer and death, or his parents’ separation and conflict?
As Jesus also said: “Do not fear those who kill the body. Fear the one who kills the soul.” People simply keep forgetting that spiritual and moral death is worse than physical death. True, physical death is sad, but only moral death is truly hideous.
Email response to the article
That [article] about Pavel and breakups is unbelievably true. Little J. [Pavel’s brother] is planning to handle it his own way. He wants to go to high school on the other side of the country. That’s basically the same as leaving home.
Poor mom.
(*) Did the stress of his parents’ breakup cause Pavlík’s cancer?
Many years later, I spoke with his mother directly about this, and it seems the cancer wasn’t caused by the breakup but he got it from his mother. His mother had, in fact, had cancer about two years before Pavlík was born. She was successfully treated, but that doesn’t mean no cancer cells remained in her body. It means that her immune system is successfully suppressing their rapid proliferation.
The same applies to me, because I was supposed to undergo a second round of chemotherapy (around 2006), but it was postponed due to inconclusive results from a PET scan, with the understanding that I would be monitored and become a “watch-and-wait” patient. Kind of like a released prisoner under official supervision. During one checkup, I told my doctor: “You know, I think those lymphoma cells are still circulating in me; it’s just that my immune system is keeping up with destroying them.” She replied laconically: “I think so too.”
That was also the case with the mother I mentioned, who, unlike me, can get pregnant. This is probably how the mother’s cancer cells got into Pavlík, because the fetus and the mother partially share the same bloodstream. As biologists say, the fetus’s cells repair the mother, so that after pregnancy she becomes a genetic chimera and has cells containing both her own DNA and the child’s DNA. Unfortunately, in this case it worked the other way around. The mother’s cancer cells entered Pavlík’s body. Until puberty, his immune system suppressed them, but apparently, with the surge of testosterone and other hormones, not only did Pavlík’s healthy growth begin, but so did the malignant division of these cells.
Notes
(*) Pavlík is a diminutive of the common given name Pavel - the little Paul.
(*) Holmes H. Thomas, Rahe H. Richard: The social readjustment rating scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Vol. 11, pp. 213-218. Pertamon Press 1967
(*) Mud-engine is a rephrasing of the term "steam-engine" and also a popular song of Viktor Sodoma in my childhood: " So we have steam-engine/mud-engine, a source of impressive power."
(*) Jára Cimrman is well-known fictive person from an alternative theater of his name. His musical compositions were typical with endless alternation of a phase of expectation followed by a phase of disappointment.
(*) The river Ploužnice is very slow around the former Ralsko Military Training Area, where the camp was. In fact, the verb "ploužit" means to go very slowly, so even the water of the river is slowed down somehow...
(*) Jára Cimrman is well-known fictive person from an alternative theater of his name. His musical compositions were typical with endless alternation of a phase of expectation followed by a phase of disappointment.
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