Bill Geracia’s ‘minute-by-minute’ journey with anxiety
A Sydney-based Salvation Army officer recently shared his difficult health journey at the Thought Matters Conference in New Zealand. This is his story.
BY KIRRALEE NICOLLE
Major Bill Geracia, Divisional Chaplaincy Manager for NSW/ACT, proud husband and dad and long-term follower of Jesus, is, this minute, very much alive.
But there is a reason he jokes with his children about having a Hollywood-style Viking burial at sea, and plans of how to make fun of his own friends at his funeral. Almost eight years ago, Bill began to grapple with his own mortality.
In December 2018, at the age of 42, Bill was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. Ongoing, debilitating pain in his abdomen eventually led to the discovery of an intestinal blockage caused by tumours. Over time, the tumours continued to multiply.
“I get hot flashes,” Bill says. “I’m really cold, or I’m really hot. I get hot sweats. I get cold sweats. I go to the bathroom a lot. It messes with the chemistry [of the body].
“It’s like throwing a strange chemical into the mix and hoping everything goes right. It throws everything out of whack.”
The first reaction Bill had to his cancer diagnosis was, understandably, shock.
“You hear the ‘c’ word and you’re just like, ‘What is this?’ But on the day I was diagnosed, I was crying, and I pulled over to a servo because I could not see through the tears. And God gave me the verse in Philippians that says, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice.’ And it was [like it was] written across my eyelids, almost. And I remember this idea of how can I possibly rejoice in this? That makes absolutely no sense.”
At the time of Bill’s diagnosis, he was Corps Officer at Tuggerah Lakes Salvos. Within the space of several months, he was one of several people diagnosed with cancer from that community.
Soon after, Bill travelled back to the United States, where he is originally from, and was forced to provide a prognosis for some visa documentation. The news was sobering.
“My life expectancy was between eight and nine years from when I was diagnosed,” he said. “That was obviously a pinnacle, kind of [thinking] ‘what does your faith look like, knowing that you could potentially be dead in the next eight years?’
“My thoughts instantly went to my son. Will I teach him how to drive? And [then] to my daughter. Will I be able to walk her down the aisle?”
In the midst of the fear and grief, Bill was having to learn how to cope day by day, minute by minute and second by second with the knowledge that his life now had a more defined expiration date.
“God continued to keep telling me that I need to live every day as if it’s my last, not just look at eight years. And so again, I’m a very practical person, so some days it’s been, ‘Okay, I just need to live the next second because I’m stressed or I have a lot of anxious thoughts’, or sometimes it’s a minute, sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s a day.
“It really became about breaking it down to whatever my mind could hold.”
Bill presented a paper at the recent Thought Matters Conference in Aotearoa New Zealand, on the topic of ‘Planning a funeral while planning for tomorrow’.
Of this early time, he wrote in his paper of the anticipatory grief he felt.
“My mind was already years ahead, grieving my absence from moments that hadn’t arrived. In worrying about whether I would be there for tomorrow, I was in danger of missing the fact that I was here today,” he wrote.
“Where the title of the paper came from was [that] my anxious thoughts are planning the funeral. I’m almost as if I’m already dead, but my practical side of myself [reminds me that] I just need to plan for today. Yes, there are thoughts of planning for a funeral and planning for when that all happens, but I need to plan today because today is the day I’m given right now and today is the only time, or one minute, one hour, whatever – that’s the only time I have control of right now. And nobody [has control]. That’s the thing.
“And so through my own experience, I learned to deal with the anxious thoughts by just dealing with the right now.”
Valuing time Having worked with alcohol and other drugs (AOD) clients, Bill says the concept of looking at the problem of the current hour, minute or second is a theory that is commonly used in treating clients facing addiction. He said this method also helps him as he considers the value of each unit of time when he knows time is running out quicker than for perhaps others his age.
“I like to say that my faith is very basic. It’s following God in this next minute because I don’t know how my life is going to be impacted by life, circumstance, burden, grief, death in the next minute. So, I’m going to follow him in this next minute and whatever happens, whatever comes next, then we’ll work that out later,” he says.
He says as a lifelong lover of fun and social interaction, his diagnosis didn’t completely flip his perspective, but it did make him more determined to make the most of every moment. But as he says this he doesn’t believe in time as wasted – any quality time is worthwhile.
“I found that some of the best times with my kids are just so random, so chaotic, so just messy. My wife comes home some days and she’s like, ‘What have you guys been up to?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, we just decided to bake cookies with our eyes closed.’ She’s like, ‘Why would you do that?’ And I’m like, ‘Why not?’
“I think in the circumstance when you realise that time is so precious, any moment is time spent. Whether it goes to plan, whether it doesn't go to plan, whether you do something they want to do, whether you do something you want to do, any moment [is special].”
Bill says even watching YouTube videos with his son, something he previously thought was a waste of time, now feels significant.
“I think the difference after the diagnosis was if he wants me to watch a video, I’m going to watch a video. If he wants to go outside and kick the ball, I’m going to go kick the ball. If he wants to sleep in our bed, then let him sleep in our bed. It’s time spent.
“I don’t think any time spent with our kids, our spouses [or others] – I don’t think that time is ever void. I don’t think it’s ever time wasted.”
Bill says he also finds himself more intentional about trying to make every social interaction, whether at the coffee shop, the supermarket or anywhere else a source of joy for the other person.
“I just want to create joy and bring a smile to people’s faces,” he says. “And not that I didn’t want to do that beforehand, I think I’m just so much more intentional. And I think that’s probably the biggest change across the board ... it’s just I try to do everything with intention.”
In his work, Bill says his diagnosis has also made him more proactive than reactive, and the intentionality he carries through other areas of life has improved his work as well and the outcomes for his team.
“I think there’s intentionality in advocating for what they need in a space. I think before the diagnosis, in my role, maybe I wasn’t as forward in advocating and truth telling.
“[Now] I’m trying to advocate for what I think is the right thing in any given moment. And if you ask me what I think, then I’m going to tell you. And I wouldn’t have done that before. I wasn’t that person.”
Bill when he was part of the inner-city chaplaincy team based out of Sydney City Salvos. Images: Supplied
Still life to live In his paper, Bill reflects on the journey he has taken to reach this point.
“Planning my funeral and planning for tomorrow are not as contradictory as they first seemed,” he writes. “I can acknowledge that death is part of my future without allowing it to take over my present. There is still life to live, people to love, ministry to do and moments in which to rejoice.”
And when Bill thinks about planning for his funeral, he has joy at the forefront of his mind.
“I want people to be joyful. I want people to laugh. I want people to tell stupid stories about things that I did,” he says. "I understand that there is a sadness that comes. There is a grief of missing somebody, but I don’t want that to overwhelm them.
“I think my biggest fear would be a bunch of people in a room crying. I think that would absolutely shatter my soul. I want people dancing in the aisles. I want people telling stupid jokes. I want people making fun of me. I really take to [heart] The Salvation Army’s idea of celebration of life. I want people to celebrate the moments that they had with me. So yeah, I don’t want it to be sad.”
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