New year. What day is it? I am disoriented. Much weaker physically this cycle of chemical onslaught - as I guiltily snooze and lay away the days. Surely I'll atrophy. Annabelle tells me to walk, articles tell me to exercise, people tell me to not eat sugar. Do all that yourself. What do you do when all you can bear to drink is Koolaid all you can bear to do is lay prone? I hate my body's betrayal, its weak submission to a few ounces of clear evil. I don't want to be this! I cried for days at every sweet commercial, I ran into a barely known neighbor at HEB yesterday as I very very carefully walked an eggshell shattering china walk extremely slowly and she saw me. I leaned into her hug and cried at her kindness. She held me. My face is dry and salty, my mouth is white and fluffy with thrush (a pretty word), my stomach is fluttering on the left every 20 minutes for 7 days like a baby is kicking me (I can even see it dent in ), my hands are numb, my eyes are twitching, my throat has a lump in it right behind my tongue, my lips have hard edges, my brain blood barrier keeps out most of the chemo (doesn't work well on brain cancer that's why) but my brain is poisoning itself with its own psychotherapy - hate mixed with sameness of day minus pleasure plus unhappiness plus the burden of carrying forth the crushing faith that all will be ok. I'll carry it. For me, and for you. But I feel weak and glance at the ground.
And my heart is with my Vicki who learned first thing on the first day of the perfect new year that was supposed to blow out the candle of the drafty and cold and squeezing and mean 2013 that her sweet sweet brother had died early early 2014. New Year's Eve - actually the new day, darkly early. Not fair. He is a kind and genuine person I got to know a little bit and I like him. He said hilarious things about sloppy joes and Vicki took extra good care of him. I'm getting a little better while she's going home to negative 10 degrees and tears that will freeze on her face. Everyone is doing everything all at once. It's not right. It's not right. It's not right. It's not right.
Myth
BY NATASHA TRETHEWEYI was asleep while you were dying.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,
the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking
you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.
For all of you:
Time help us.
As inadequate as it is to say. ...I am very sorry about your Vicki's brother.
ReplyDeleteEvery word of kindness is perfectly adequate - as you know. Thank you, I'll pass it on.
DeleteI'm sure you get lots of advice from people who "know" the best way to beat cancer but follow your instincts; Eat what you want, do what you want and feel how you feel. Do whatever works to get you through this horrible nightmare. This year will be better!!
ReplyDeleteThe news of Vicki's brother is very sad and I'm very sorry for the pain she's going through right now. You will lean on each other and you will both get through this.
Yes true
DeleteLife is so mysterious
Thank you Kim
Vicki I am so very very sorry.
ReplyDeleteThank you I'll pass it on
DeleteAs I was reading your list of maladies, I was thinking it kind of sounds like Dr. Seuss or maybe that poem Sick by Shel Silverstein...
ReplyDeleteSick
"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my spine is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"
--Shel Silverstein
I wish it was that easy for you to jump up and feel better. Hopefully, this brought you a smile. It was one of my favorite poems in 4th grade.
Love to you and Vicki!
I'm better
DeleteHaving a taco and a beer
Love this!!!
Looking up poems is kind of fun...Not usually my thing, but thinking about Shel Silverstein reminded me of one of my other favorites from him. This one is really fun to read out loud...
ReplyDeleteIckle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too
from the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (1974)
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too
Went for a ride in a flying shoe.
"Hooray!"
"What fun!"
"It's time we flew!"
Said Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
Ickle was captain, and Pickle was crew
And Tickle served coffee and mulligan stew
As higher
And higher
And higher they flew,
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too,
Over the sun and beyond the blue.
"Hold on!"
"Stay in!"
"I hope we do!"
Cried Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle too
Never returned to the world they knew,
And nobody
Knows what's
Happened to
Dear Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
My college students love this! Good old Shel - always perfect - thank you !
DeleteLove
ReplyDelete2014 an up year I plea for u.
Here next door with warm cat and a stack of mindless magazines I can drop off :) Glad you're feeling a little better.
ReplyDeleteAnd (though I don't know her) I'm sorry for Vicki's loss.
Thanks Susan
DeleteWe grow up clueless to how hard life is, how it gets harder and harder as our bodies succumb to time and gravity. I wonder: if we had been less protected as children would we respond differently to the pain that comes? Because life's unpredictable cruelties overwhelm us, even though we find the way to resurrect ourselves. The prospects make us quake. We have to deny we are all due. Does knowing that life is suffering as Buddhists know make it more endurable? But we do endure. Vicki will endure. That is the paradox. We feel devastated, and yet we survive. we prevail. That, to me, seems the mystery.
ReplyDeleteI send Vicki hugs of love and comfort. And to you. Of course, to you.
A synchronicity. I left your blog to go back to my emails, and the next one I read contained this: "Buddha taught that the source of all suffering is our attempt to escape from direct experience. Being present means not directing our attention at trying to change the situation but being with what is happening, no matter how good or bad. It means paying precise, nonjudgmental attention to the details of our current experience, as it arises and subsides and rejecting no part of it. Being present means respecting the dignity and rationality of each situation and person, it means suspending our own views temporarily and not wishing for things, people or situations to be different. It means releasing our preconceived expectations and above all it requires a great deal of patience and trust. This applies to pleasant experiences as well, which we so often fail to relish, because of future fears or past distractions."
ReplyDeleteJust read this in an article on combat veterans suffering PTSD: "Survivors of such severe trauma inevitably confront questions about existence that most of us avoid, and the potential for growth comes not from the event itself but from the struggle to make sense of it."
ReplyDeleteSo true. My brother and niece are very changed people after surviving cancer.
DeleteOh sweet Amy, your truth is so keen and so admired by me. I have spent time watching my niece struggling with her body and it's difficulties. And now it's not doing what we take for granted , as yours is not as well, it is not excreting as we expect, it's not nurishing her, as we need. Life is so unfair, but it continues and we do what we do and hope that our good thoughts count for something. Do they? Sending good thoughts sounds so lame. love you all the same.
ReplyDeleteThank you for "Bee" ing there for her and for me
DeleteI loved the poem. and my brother.
ReplyDelete