Going slowly, but not stopping

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

Nothing quite like eating nothing for +/- 40 hours and downing a quart of Half-Lightly to really clean out the… Mind! You thought I was going to say body, guts, or colon: anything like that right. That’s far too obvious.

Nope, it’s the mind. After getting beyond the hunger (which does pass), after the caffeine headache realizes it’s defeat, and the guts have been flushed, you start to slow down. You don’t have the energy to get worked up about things and the body and mind conserve for crisis. Now then, provided there are no impending crises on the horizon, you are set to Buddha the heck out of the rest of your day. Frankly, the Demerol you get for the colonoscopy doesn’t hurt either.

So yes, I’ll admit that on this, the eve of the one-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis,  I was feeling a bit anxious about the follow up colonoscopy I was party to this afternoon. And was thinking about the curious timing of many of my procedures. It’s as if the spirits that be are not going to let me cop-out and forget 2009 no matter how hard and fast I cross the days off the calendar in order to finally hang our 2010. Sweet Jesus, I don’t care if it’s full of cute kitty and puppy picture with captions like “hang in there, baby” and “keep it up, kiddo”, just as long as it says 2010 all over it.

You know what is really curious. I actually didn’t realize or accept that I had stage 4 cancer (and I mean HAD!) until after the last chemo. I know the doctors told us, but it turns out I am a professional at putting my virtual fingers in my ears and disregarding the scary stuff. And to that I owe a big thanks to all the men in my life that made me watch horror movies. I never thought there could be any good reason for that genre of film, but it turns out tuning out is the benefit.

Seems to me a good recipe for near death or any number of crises of humankind might be:

1 tsp of reality
2 tsp of denial
1 tsp of grace
2 tablespoons of humor
3 tablespoons of self-love and acceptance
2 cups of belief
2 cups of hope and prayers filled by others
And a couple pinches of vanilla (because I have found that vanilla makes almost everything better).

Like any good recipe it seems the baking and the making takes forever. And while it is in the oven you watch it, wait and hope it doesn’t fall because you may have clomped about too much. When it emerges from the oven it is delicate and too hot, so you continue to admire and wait and hope it is all right. Then, finally, you get to taste it. And then all that time it took; all the working, the waiting,  the hoping, and the cooling, slips from your mind the way a dew drop falls from a leaf when jostled and disappears into the undergrowth, swiftly and gently.

And although you have tasted it before, life has never quite tasted as full and good as this.

It’s not the what? It’s the how. It’s not when? It’s now.

How do you free yourself from an experience? I have loads of them I have sloughed off, can’t recall unless someone reminds me and even then it’s sketchy. Almost all of my elementary school through college is vague and disappearing slowly. Unused. Then there are the experiences that I’d like to release and yet they have burrowed so deeply inside me that they are no longer memories, or feelings, but have become part of my DNA.

I’d like to free myself of the experience of cancer. Not because I am not proud or grateful for some of what came from it. But mostly because I get fearful that if I spend too much time thinking about it, it’ll come back. Obviously, I can’t walk away and every day I think about it, more than once for certain. Really I just don’t know what to do with my experience of having had cancer now. And I do feel like I should do something with it.

You know those tea bags that have the little fortune dangling from the string. Well, I can’t help but see them as a particular message meant for me (because I happened to grab THAT very tea bag) at that very moment. Superstitious much? Yep. Anyway, tonight mine said:

To learn, read

To know, write

To master, teach

Okay got it. But teach who? teach what? teach where? And is that even it? I just dont know. But I sure would like to think that there was something meaningful to do with this experience rather than try to slough it off.

Something will eventually come to light, the path will reveal itself… I just need to drink more tea, that’s all.

I hope you had a lovely Turkey day if you celebrated it. I Hope you had a lovely Thursday if you didn’t.

My holiday blessing to you:

“Let us rise up and be thankful; for if we did not learn a lot today,

at least we learned a little, and if we did not learn a little,

at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick at least we didn’t die, so let us be thankful.” (Buddha)