Finding Unexpected Dimensions

My place has changed. My outlook on life, past, present and future – changed the moment I stirred from the anesthetic sleep of a routine procedure and heard the words, “Mr. Thompson, we need to bring your family in the room”.

That was eighty-four days ago, and it was the first indication; the first vague notion that something might be seriously wrong with me. From there, as the days passed, I found out how seriously ill I was. Emotionally crushed and terrified, I realized that I wouldn’t be returning to my ridged calendar of fishing, ginseng hunting, cycling and teaching math at the college anytime soon. My full time job would become that of a cancer patient.

In these eighty-four days, I have generally accepted things the way they are. I feel adjusted, if not still slightly confused as to why things had to be this way. And while I don’t know for sure, I feel down inside my heart, I will be okay.

Yet when I am still and quiet, some moments, thoughts come over me, and I feel saddened that I hadn’t done more with my life in these 49 years. Prior to August 26, 2011, I thought or I was certain that my life was simply half done, and that I had about the same amount of time left to complete all of the things I had dreamed of. While I am not necessarily afraid of dying much sooner than I thought I would, it feels at times as if something has wiggled loose. The structures that fastened everything together, providing my life with a comfortable certainty (that I took for granted), have failed – sending me into state of limbo, that, at times, feels insane.

I always thought I had time to rebuild a colony of honey bees, or plant a small apple orchard. And while I may very well have plenty of time to do all of the things I thought I would, the certainly typically allotted a healthy 50 year old man is gone, and I am left, at least for the moment, wondering if I need to piece together a Bucket List, if not a bit premature.

It’s not that I believe that anybody’s life span is certain… any one of us could expire at any given moment. It’s just that somebody has come to me recently, and said “Your life and times may be over soon”, and the act of living on a daily basis has become… Well,it has become more interesting among many other things.

If the normal life and times is experienced in only two dimensions, future and past, forward and backward; then it feels as if living with cancer has added a side-to-side component; a left and a right. It feels odd.