Yesterday I lay under the machine and counted the buzzes for last time. I took off my baggy hospital shorts , put them in the laundry bin and didn't choose a new pair from the pile. Then I drove home and sat in the drivers seat of the car for a long time, not quite sure if I had the energy to walk from the garage into the house. Then inside, sleep for a while and go gently into that good day.
Because I had been remarkably OK for the past few weeks, it was a bit surprising to be so tired yesterday. I guess that when the whole process was finished by mind was able to let go of the effort required to maintain equilibrium and gave my body permission to zonk out. I keep forgetting how body and mind and spirit are an integrated whole, and are not three separate things sitting inside each other like Russian dolls. I am a trinity, not a tiumvirate.
Now it's wait and see. On March 25 I'll see the oncologist and he'll examine the entrails - my entrails - and tell me whether all the xrays have actually done anything useful. It's going to be a fairly clear cut divergence of roads in a yellow wood on March 25. Either I still have cancer or I don't. Either I walk out of his office as a comparatively well man or as a cancer patient waiting for the inevitable, albeit very slow, falling of Damocles' sword. Either way though, life is not the same from this point on. My body has told me that changes must be made in the way I exist within it. And because I am a trinity, changes to my body must imply changes to my mind and spirit.
Something else happened yesterday. Our Eurail passes arrived, complete with a book of instructions and a dinky wee map. In two months we're going to travel the length of Italy staying in monsatic guesthouses. We'll be tourists, sure, but night times will be regulated by the sounds and rhythms of monastic life and day times by the clacking of iron wheels on rails. Then we'll be with strong conservatively Christian friends in Switzerland before spending a week at Taize. Then we'll walk the Camino in Northern Spain. Then we go to London where I hope to spend some time with Laurence Freeman.It'll be a retreat. A moving retreat, I hope in more ways than one. It will be a retreat which seems to be providentially timed no matter what Mr North tells me on March 25.
Comments
Life is to be taken by the shoulders, shaken hard and anything that falls out of the pockets are ours to keep.
But if you have a joke, life will laugh and give us what's in its hands as well.
Hey, that's pretty good, eh? I just made it up.
That said, I think it is beneficial for us to bear in our minds that the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us once we've passed the point of conception.
None of us knows when death shall come; bearing in mind that it WILL come (death being the one sure thing about life) can help us live with virtue, compassion, and, yes, equanimity.
May you be well, happy, and safe.
I have been thinking a bit lately, can't think why, about the denial of death - how pervasive it is. Ernest Becker said back in 1973 that the denial of death is the single greatest determinant in the development of culture -that practically every cultural artifact is an attempt to build immortality and thus deny the pervasiveness of death. The spirituality of being is posited on the non existence of the self, and probably this implies a similar thing happening in the psyche of most people. We build inner structures - the "things" that together make up our sense of self - in an attempt to deny our own finitude. Being told with authority what you already knew but have been pretending not to know - that death is lurking on the front porch - certainly cuts through the crap and brings one face to face with the reality of existence in a whole new way. Probably a good thing. But traumatic.
And also wishing you well with your European trip. Planning it is so much fun isn't it. I'm sure it will be fantastic. I love Europe and travelling by train.
Manfred & I have booked to go to Berlin again for 4 weeks in June, to visit his parents and sister and brother-in-law. Very exciting!
Thinking of you and praying for you. :-)
You write, "Being told with authority what you already knew but have been pretending not to know - that death is lurking on the front porch - certainly cuts through the crap and brings one face to face with the reality of existence in a whole new way. Probably a good thing. But traumatic."
It's traumatic, just as you say. Perhaps some of the trauma can be diminished by prior contemplation of death. Forrest Church's book, Love and Death, provides testimony to this idea. He was able to arrive pretty quickly at acceptance of his immanent death (too quickly from his wife point of view) when he was given an authoritative and dismal diagnosis of terminal cancer.
It's probably easier to begin by contemplating the deaths of those near and dear to us.
Roman philosophers Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius commended the contemplation of death as a means of living one's life more fully. Quoting from William B. Irvine's new book, A Guide to the Good Life:
"Epictetus also advocates negative visualization. He counsels us, for example, when we kiss our child, to remember that she is mortal and not something we own that she has been given to us 'for the present, not inseparably nor for ever.' His advice: In the very act of kissing the child, we should silently reflect on the possibility that she will die tomorrow. In his Meditations, by the way, Marcus Aurelius approvingly quotes this advice.
To see how imagining the death of a child can make us appreciate her, consider two fathers. The first takes Epictetus's advice to heart and periodically reflects on his child's mortality. The second refuses to entertain such gloomy thoughts. He instead assumes that his child will outlive him and that she will always be around for him to enjoy. The first father will almost certainly be more attentive and loving than the second. When he sees his daughter the first thing in the morning, he will be glad that she is still a part of his life and during the day he will take full advantage of opportunities to interact with her. The second father, in contrast, will be unlikely to experience a rush of delight on encountering his child in the morning. Indeed he might not even look up from the newspaper to acknowledge her presence in the room."
A better vision: 'I know that my Redeemer liveth...' - you know how the rest goes!
Indeed I do know that my redeemer liveth. But it's not my redeemer's mortality that I'm concerned about.
Sam Hunt the poet has a poem (can't find the damn thing) where he holds and whispers to his newly born second son (out of earshot of anyone else) "Welcome to death row" - the juxtapostion of new born innocence and death is a striking paradoxical truth of our existence - from the time we are born we are dying - yet none of us knows the time.
What I admire about you as you skirt around the edges of all this is your humour, your wit, your intelligence and your courage - hang in there old friend, many people who love you are praying hard for that 'all clear' on the 25th.
All that I do know for sure is that I feel for you Kelvin, in your present dilemma, and that I will surely pray for you.