In the beginning, there was darkness.

It was midnight. The lights in the emergency room were dimmed. The scans were showing a shadowy “mass” inside the boy, our baby.

The “mass” was hard. The “mass” was big. The “mass” had caused his kidney to cleave in two.

It inspired dread, but allowed for hope. As long as the “mass” lacked a proper name, we could try to explain it away – make it trivial, innocuous.

But, eventually, we felt compelled to meet this stranger. We needed to see its face, and size it up. So, we asked the question. We asked it hesitantly, knowing the answer, but hoping hard for something else.

“Could it be cancer?”

“I think probably,” came the response. “We’ll know more tomorrow.”

That night, we pictured the cancer spreading through our baby’s body like ink diffusing in water. Entropic. Irreversible. We walked ourselves to the abyss of Life Minus One, we stared into it, and we grieved.

The sun rose.

Through pricks and probes, the adversary took shape. The Thing That Could Not Be Named revealed itself to be intimidating, but not indomitable.

Of course, the kid never doubted this. He had the sort of wisdom that comes from knowing less. He didn’t think about mortality, or treatment outcomes. He experienced the world as a series of moments. Catheter, bad. Gift, good. Cannula, annoying. Lump, inconvenient. Life, ongoing.

This was how we wanted it to be. Our job was to scan the horizon and navigate the safest route. His job was to look down at the path and focus on the next step. We hid our fear and our uncertainty deep inside us, where it could not distract him and cause him to stumble.

We hid our fear as he slipped into the darkness of the ether-induced slumber. And we hid our fear as he awoke with a wound that started on one side of him, and almost finished on the other. A life in two halves.

For the poet Rumi, “the wound is the place where the light enters you”.

For our little family, the light came from all directions. The darkness exploded into a galaxy of beauty and love and insight.

Some of the lights were close and familiar – dear acts from dear people. A prayer said. A text sent. An errand run. A garden watered. A pet housed. A gift chosen. A kitchen cleaned. A coffee delivered. An ear offered. A meal cooked. A chemo hat purchased.

Other lights were entirely new. Casual acquaintances volunteering to babysit. Parents of friends organising prayer circles hundreds of kilometres away. A new colleague offering a casserole and a personal loan.

In the hospital, strangers bathed our son, and checked on his pain, and tended to his wounds, and fed us, and spoke words of comfort and wisdom, and made him laugh.

It is easy to forget that we are surrounded by light. We close our eyes to avoid being distracted. We have jobs to do. Bills to pay. Places to be. Things to do. Judgments to make. Egos to protect. Mistakes to avoid.

But, the lights are always there. They’re just more obvious in the darkness.