The best analogy that I can come up with for the last 2 weeks would be as if I was stranded on a beach in the mid afternoon during the height of summer. The shade was minimal, the sand fused with an eternal perspiration that cracked against the skin and the water’s relief felt like a hot bath during a heat wave. Then, in a moment not expected, the tide turned and drew the waters closer with an exquisite sea breeze that seemed to lift the burden of even the most hardy of coastal vegetation. That tide turned for me yesterday afternoon when I hoisted my own white flag.
This road that I’m sharing/experiencing has only one destination, no matter how many distractions or delays that one can conjure, the journey is always as perpetual as the tide returning into a glorious sunset.
For many weeks, days, hours and moments I have lived and breathed in my own world of illness and mortality. From the moment that I wake (way too early) through to my more frequent naps, my mind and body has been besieged by “the battle.” Of late, the pain and discomfort has forced me into a regime of medication that dulled my landscape into a blurry abstract and warped my mind into a numbness more akin to a moody and aggrieved survival mode. This conflict, born of some primitive and archaic rule of medicine was more lethal to me than the tumors that keep forming into what Laurie calls my “Cancer Suit” (and what I call my inner and now outer fat bastard). The harder I fought, the more I fed the conflict and the more ill I became.
The dam was breeched yesterday when I saw the truth in someone else’s eyes. It was time to end my own dogma and dismiss the conflict that was more cytotoxic than the treatment that has already proven to be ineffectual. And far from my preconceived notions of “giving up,” the admission itself of “I’m done,” gifted to me a surrender of peaceful acceptance that personifies a euphoric liberty. It seems that the white flag, when waved at the right time and under the right circumstances, does not incur weakness or an unwillingness to fight, but a freedom from a conflict that should never have been born.
So today after a memorable night of heart felt conversations with Laurie, the same ones were iterated with my Oncologist. His demeanor seemed to match ours as if the veil of medical fantasy was lifted toward the inevitable that we all knew existed yet had only scratched the surface of actual recognition. The long awaited scan will be scheduled for next week as a formality simply to confirm that no further active treatment will occur and the focus re-centered on palliative care only. The cliché of quality over quantity has never been more pertinent to me.
From the start of this journey, I have felt an acceptance and experienced a strength that I thought was instinctual, however yesterday I realized that it was a veneer. I viewed the smoke and mirrors for what it was…something vicarious that I had borrowed from those who had travelled this road before me. I also understood that I had to birth my own understanding of death to truly stand in the rising waters of my moments and greet the future with more to say than “it was a hoot” (even though it has been) and that I have found a new level of peaceful acceptance that exceeds my wildest expectations.
Without declaring today to be “National Metaphor Day,” I simply want to expand on the ending of my previous post where my mention of the “whispering of God” has nagged at me through the voice of Laurie. That first gentle whisper has evolved into the flowing art of positive conversation and unleashed words that are yet to be invented but are born of pure gratitude.
I have used the terms of family and friends upon many occasions, yet now in these times, I can honestly say to each of my family that there have been many a moment that you were also my friend when I needed you the most. To my friends, in just as many circumstances when you have stood with me it seemed that we of the same blood and your loyalty was that of family. I see all of you now with my heartfelt appreciation. And even now as I trace those events of my life, though the tiles of history may have been broken by time and tides, the jigsaw is nearly complete and has since been fashioned into a mosaic of absolute joy.
3 months ago the music of my existence altered forever from the routine of staid choruses with an occasional inspiring verse thrown in. From then it has become a cacophony of “It’s OK, I got this…oops no I don’t.” This continued back and fro until even I became dizzy from the struggle that was never going to be overcome. Since yesterday, my chorus is almost an anthem with the joy of the moment as it blends with new verses of discovery and wonder. Finally I’ve opted for reality’s clear lens and discarded the magenta that hid from me my own poetry.
This life’s music ebbs and flows, guided by the lunar light that bids the waters to travel and discover; and then to return. At its zenith tonight, it told me not to wait in the shadows but to bathe in the light of my new song, my new muse and my new moments.
This last journey holds no conflict for me, nor is it framed in a man made mirage of hopes and dreams. These are the simple steps that we all must tread…yet if people really are like flowers, it has truly been an absolute privilege to wander amid this garden.
