I have received an amazing gift from my cancer. It took cancer, Livestrong and the Stand Up to Cancer movement to bring it out of me.
The movement, Stand Up To Cancer, encourages cancer survivors and their loved ones to stand up and be counted. I first posted on Facebook in response to their campaign at the MLB All Star Game. Then, Livestrong ran their Wear Yellow campaign. Owning my disease, writing about it, talking about it, acknowledging it makes me the master. I can choose how to live my life and how I feel. Thank you Stand Up To Cancer and Livestrong for giving me the chance to find my voice.
Prior to having a life threatening illness, I equated such an illness with a death sentence. And, in most ways, it is. However, it's what "death sentence" means to those that have not had one that's most terrifying. Dying is a scary prospect. Seeing death in others is a scary prospect. It reminds you of your own death - a scary prospect. Because we do not talk about death and we mention deadly things in hushed voices ("she has cancer...", "he has AIDS..."), we give these diseases more power than they deserve, amplifying them.
The thing is, that innocent pre-cancer world, the one where most people live feels (to them) like a safe world where life is good and secure. Looking through the window at us cancer folk, they feel pity and concern for us and our families and wonder how we cope and just get through the day. What a gray world we must live in, dragging that huge cancer rock wherever we go. Speak quietly or you may remind them of their imminent death.
Not me, though. That's not it at all. You see, on my side of the window, I see color and life and vibrant passionate commitment to live in the moment. Not a hedonistic live in the moment, but an appreciate every moment. You could spend decades going to a Zen Center and never receive the understanding of how to live in the moment you get from a few months of coming to terms with a life threatening illness. Sure, I would prefer a life in which this never happened, but I cannot change that. I will speak loudly and without fear. My only choice is to play the hand I've been dealt.
What is that hand?
Presumably, modern medicine has given me many more years, potentially many decades of life. Had my cancer (and its recurrence) not been detected and not addressed, surely it would have consumed my body and I would be dead. Yet, here I am.
So, tonight, I sit at my table and my family eats food that I cooked for them and we talk and share and we are a family. And, they don't think about my mortality, but I think about it and the world that isn't, and I look at them and enjoy them and am thankful for a simple meal and some good conversation.
Later this week and next, friends will come over our house and we will eat food and drink wine and enjoy each others company and I will view them with two sets of eyes: ones that see them as they are and others that see each of us as little flames that burn and then go out. We are all bright and unique. Bask in the glow of those flames while they are here before the storm takes them (or me).
This is not sad!
It is precious and fragile and to be appreciated... simple moments... the company of others... treasures all of it.
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