Meditation on my left eyebrow

I have half an eyebrow over my left eye. It is never going to grow back.  My eyelashes are returning, as is the hair inside a temporarily bare triangle right in the center of my head.  My skin has regained its normal color, the swelling in my face has gone down considerably and may resolve completely.  I can't breathe through my left nostril - it has fused shut as a result of the radiation - but that can probably be fixed by surgery, not easily or painlessly, but it is possible to make my nose as good as new. My eyebrows, however, will never be the same.

Every day when I look in the mirror I will remember that I had cancer growing in my face - "head and neck cancer" is how it is inelegantly described in the literature. I will perpetually be reminded that my face was irradiated with the maximum allowable dose of proton beams in an attempt to kill the tumor cells that had silently proliferated in my sinus and my orbit. I may be heartened by the fact that the cancer seems to be under control, but whenever I catch a glimpse of that assymetrical brow I will remember that some things can never be fixed. 

We can fix a lot of things - medically, physically, relationally, emotionally, but a sad fact of life is that there are things much more significant than eyebrows that can never be fixed, that will always be broken, marred, shattered or scarred. We don't like to admit anything is inexorably damaged.  We all have the urge to fix what is broken, to heal what is hurt.  It feels so hopeless to say something has been destroyed, that nothing can be done, but sometimes that's the truth.  We can apologize, but we may never be forgiven. We can make restitution, but we may never be considered trustworthy again. We can try to take back our words - swear we never meant them, but they may continue to hang in the air, forever clouding the atmosphere between us and another person.

The writer of Ecclesiastes mourns that "what is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is not there cannot be counted."  He's right. For  many things there is no easy fix - for some there is just no fix under heaven. Thank God there is still Heaven.