TAKING YOU TO PLACES YOU WOULD RATHER NOT GO: A Journey with Cancer
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CHAPTER I
Shock - The Early Days
It’s 2:00 in the morning. It’s as quiet as the intensive care unit of a hospital gets. Sounds of shuffling feet, muted conversations and the purring, whirring, disconcerting sound of machines and sophisticated equipment going on and off– these all become part of your environment and let you know you are in a strange, surrealistic place you would rather not be. Time is a vague reality. You know that you spent a previous night in this strange new world, but days and nights seem to merge into shades of light and darkness with no sense of meaningful activity. Your mind is at work, teeming with contradictory thoughts. When it begins to focus too long on a single thought, the thought begins to break apart and dissipate into a vague, meaningless abstraction, with dark elements of terror lurking just beneath the surface. Your mind mercifully turns off before the demons are allowed to surface.
CHAPTER VII
Living the Eternal Now
Time is a troublemaker. It is fickle and capricious and at times downright annoying. When you want it to slow down so that you might savor the moment, it races by, and when you want it to pass quickly, it drags on endlessly, driving you to distraction. Time is a physiological phenomenon, in the sense that your body and the world it inhabits is part of a system that moves from point to point in a succession of events that comprise the duration of our lifetime. Time’s essence lies in the inner recesses of the mind or soul where existence approaches the eternal. Past merges irreversibly into present and both ultimately become the future. We then, become a constantly changing, evolving, new being whose ultimate end is part of the great mystery where time becomes eternity.
I have done much reading during my illness, searching for therapies, techniques or just practical wisdom that might be helpful to me in achieving peace of mind. Considering the impact this has on your healing potential, knowing that the mind can influence the body’s immune system, such a search can be very meaningful.
AFTERWORD
Remembering, Then and Now
The notes below were written a few days after my Dad passed. His family stood guard. I remember his last gesture, reaching out, no words spoken, his eyes were the bridge we walked on. Then, he left us. As time goes by, the images and the memories become more remote but the meaning of his life, his journey with cancer, his courage, his unfathomable love for his family, becomes clearer. In his absence, he is present more.
He was Never Alone: In Memoriam
Thursday, March 23, 1995. I took my father to the hospital because of the large swelling in his legs, ankles, and feet. He knew in the way you don’t know that you know, as we sat in the Friendly’s restaurant waiting for his admission paperwork to be completed. I did not realize how close to the end it was. He died six days later.