Cancer 9

Control and suppression but not curative

It will never go away. That’s what I’m told. Bummer. However, my numbers are going down, so that’s a good thing. The hormone therapy appears to be working: good guys hunting down bad guys and strangling them. What it means to live with this forever I don’t yet know. I don’t want to live forever, anyway, but I don’t like it that I can’t skip from rock to rock, that I can’t cross a stream without falling. I don’t like it that it’s hard for me to plant a tree. I don’t like it that it’s so hard for me to walk to the creek. I miss listening to what it says.

On the other hand

I ask myself, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” I ask myself that a lot these days. It’s what’s on my mind. I have to because I don’t want to fall into a funk that other people need to bear. Jamie is off on a gig to Tulsa, but my nephew, Jon, is here to keep an eye on things meaning an eye on me. In case I fall. They tell me that’s a death sentence: fall, break hip, admit to hospital, lie there, get pneumonia, die. But Jon and I shoot the shit ‘til midnight. If this isn’t nice…I’m awake, and I’m alive, and, although I’ve got pain and discomfort, I’m tingly with excitement because I’m learning so much, corroborating to great extent, stuff I’ve been thinking about for years. I can stand in the wind and be a part of it. I can stand in the midst of a forest and be a part of it. Be here now. Thank you Timothy Leary. Thank you Ram Das. Thank you Marcus Aurelius. Sartre. Kierkegard. Maimonides. St. John. Thank you to all who know the present because that’s where it pays to be: a place where there is no past, there is no future, there is only this moment. Think of the sports you’ve played: the swing of a bat, the release of a ball, the smack of a racket,the rush of a four punch combination, giving your horse full rein. Sheer focus. Sheer abandon. There is no other feeling but the feeling of that swing, that release, that wind in the face and the thunder underneath. Nothing else exists in the instant. What a rush! What a high! I’m alive! It doesn’t last but I do.

There is still work to do, work to undo, work that nags to be done. Miles to go before I sleep. If I forget, please remind me. Tell me: “Stephen, you forgot”, and I’ll do my best to fix it. Say, “Dad, you forgot”, and I’ll flip backwards (or would if I could). Call out, “Grandpa, you forgot”, and I will take you by the hand and show you monarch butterflies on milkweed, show you where the salamander lies, show you where the bear hides and the deer ate my peaches, show you, I hope, my heart.