I Notice The Wrens Tea Kettle...

Sitting out side the IGA last night, the sun was gone over the horizon… the colors – orange, blue, pink and gray were remarkable. Still I was not a happy person. I turned my truck off; turnout the lights and I sat there feeling as if there was something I needed to do before going into the store to buy my groceries.

Sitting in my truck in the dark and darkening parking lot at IGA I began to cry; a little at first, and more and more… until I was weeping uncontrollably. When It was over and I had wiped clean my face, I went on into the store as if nothing were wrong at all.

I have enjoyed the holidays. I have enjoyed the time off from chemo and I have enjoyed the joy and love and peacefulness of the season. But that is over now, and it time for me to resume my fight against this cancer.

It is time for me to resume my fight against the cancer. I never imagined I’d have need to say those words, nor engage in such a combat, at least not so early in my geriatric career. Sure I have been taking it in stride. I have been as positive as I could have been. Perhaps it is the post holidays blues combined with having to return to chemotherapy and all of the side effects and sickness that in tells (Subjecting yourself to nearly intolerable sickness to save your own life is not a joyful thing) and I am taking it hard.

So much out there about new years resolutions… some people want to loose weight, drink less, spend more time with family, work less, work more, take vitamins…. On and on. I have had no idea for a resolution – even though it is obvious what my resolution should be. It seems as if I either burry myself in the genealogical work I am presently doing, or I burry myself under my bed covers, behind a locked door, and a long and steep stairway.

I have never liked the times after Christmas and by the time the new year rolls in, I have been, historically beset with some depression. Stage 4 cancer has done nothing to remedy that affliction.

Yet, though it may seem like bitterness, it is not a bitterness that besets me. It is a genuine sadness. It is a sadness which, if I did not let my self process, would surely become bitterness. Occasionally I am criticized for hanging on to negative things, or sad nesses. As human beings, I believe it is crucially necessary for us to hang on to the things that trouble us most until we resolve them- at a minimum, make peace with them. Difficult emotions quickly discarded in the sake of immediate relief, I am certain leads to deeper, more damaging bitterness. So I am working though this low time, here, writing, not necessarily for this blog, but writing for the sake of the healthy human process that can make us more well, and not deeply more better and far less well.

Expressing ones true heart and state of being can be damaging to one position and prestige. Those are never things I’ve cared about – so it is easy for me to write this, knowing that I will probably put it up there for you to read.

I believe, we has human beings must present ourselves to the public with a certain amount composure. To do other wise, we believe, often results in social death… and that is not far from the truth. That is the case many times.

Yet I am not composed – and I feel it completely and entirely more HUMAN to express myself; my fears, and anxieties, even short comings; so that I may have lived as a human being and not just a person seeking status.

I have discovered in the last four months, that being sick with possibly terminal cancer brings for in my environment, just two types of people. Those who will engage you as a human being and offer prayers, and those who will avoid you (perhaps in fear of not knowing what to say, or fear of the sickness itself – wanting to distance themselves from death as far as they can). I honestly don’t mind or care which of those you have been when you see me. My body may fail before its due time. It may not; but my body will one day fail as will yours. God calls us all home regardless of our status or importance. Dignity comes to mind for those who are critically ill, And our sacred responsibility to our loved ones to provide that dignity. Death and dying is an ugly and necessary process in life. Dignity for me lies in my ability to tell you how afraid I can me at times. It lies in my ability to tell you, I don’t want to be sick. It lies in my ability to tell you that I want to live to be an old man. And it lies in my ability to show you how vulnerable I am; and uncomposed and downright at times horrified at times.

Perhaps a dignitary would not do this. I am not that. I am a man who wants to live just like millions of other cancer patients. So in efforts to remain not bitter, but joyful and accepting whenever possible, I can’t simply dismiss my emotions for the sake of composure. I must process my emotions. And this journal and other writings and activities do that for me.

Dying is not my greatest fear. Dying a bitter person is even worse. Dignity in death stems from the knowledge that all life, not just human life, is nearly always hard. In our World, it is fear it is all to easy to become bitter. When those who have scrummed to bitterness in life will probably have a bitter death, and not a triumphant one.

Today, in the cold wind, and snow, I was engaged by an abandoned kitten. It was hungry, cold, thirsty, and unloved. I think, thought I am not sure, it made me consider; not all life is human. Not all live to lose is human. All creatures fear death and experience cold, hunger and suffering.

If I had a resolution for 2012, it would be to become in remission of this cancer. I will do everything in my power to achieve this. But more, I seek dignity in my illness. And this, not just because I want to be dignified. Hardly. There was a time when any given number of my own friends were sick with cancer and family who died from it.

Our instinct and desire is to live as long as possible. To do so without bitterness or regret, Devine.