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The fight of my life...
Jan. 6th, 2016 08:52 amI perceive myself to be in the fight of my life right now.
I use this rather odd "perceive" construction, which sounds like it was glommed from a story by Conan Doyle, because in distinction from a situation—say, a fire—where the threat is immediate, direct, and obvious to the senses, my cancer has (knock wood) not yet announced its presence, except through the mechanism of medical diagnosis and therapy—that, and doctors of all stripe persistently asking how I'm managing my pain (to which I am fortunate enough to answer, for now, "I'm not experiencing any pain").
That said, I suppose one could step back and observe that everyone is, every day and to one degree or another, in the fight of their lives. It's just people in my condition are more aware of the fact, to a greater or lesser extent.
This is something of a generalization of an epiphany I experienced while trying to "put aside" a particularly persistent maudlin question, variations of which have been bullying their way into my consciousness all too often over the past month or so.
Said question announces itself with the words "What if this is the last time I'm..."—followed by some activity, such as "celebrating a birthday?" or "putting up a Christmas tree?" It's almost as if I'm expecting that, whatever it is I'm doing, I'm doing for the last time.
Permit me to digress with a specific instance...
Back near the beginning of December, while Galina was still in New York, I happened to pass by a Goodwill store and stopped to hold the door for a customer that had just bought a used Christmas tree. As I watched the woman push the cart and the oversized box into the parking lot, I got to thinking about how, ever since the kids went out on their own, Galina and I have put up any Christmas decoration only sporadically, and not at all in recent years.
And it occurred to me that seeing some sort of tree in the house would be nice this year, even if it was a tree that had been used, used, used and teetered on its last legs as it did its job. I don't know what prompted that thought, maybe it was living alone in the house with only the animals for company while Galina was up north, maybe it was something else.
So I turned around, went into the store, found a suitable tree, and bought it. My first impression, upon opening the box at home, was that my whimsical specification—"used, used, used," etc.—had actually been fully satisfied, the tree was little more than a pile of junk, and the sum benefit of having bought it was the support I had shown for Goodwill Industries and the organization's work. Still, I set about assembling the tree, just to see what it was I had bought.
And it was while I was inserting the middle section of the tree into the bottom section that the thought crossed my mind—"What if this is the last Christmas tree I'm putting up?" And I stood there, for a moment, both aware of the question and resentful of the fact that it had occurred to me...
And then—bless that doggedly optimistic part of my mind—I realized that everyone could ask themselves the same question with equal validity, but it's pretty much only people like me, who are or have been made aware of their mortality, that ever get around to asking it. And not just about Christmas trees.
With that realization, I found it no task at all to put aside the question and to turn my full attention to being mindful of what I'm doing—bending the wire "boughs" to best advantage, noticing the texture of the plastic pine "needles," restringing the lights, and so on—which is what all of us should be doing anyway, no matter what our condition or activity.
And you know what? The question has all but stopped popping up in my head. Even better, once I got the tree assembled, it looked pretty good!
Cheers...
I use this rather odd "perceive" construction, which sounds like it was glommed from a story by Conan Doyle, because in distinction from a situation—say, a fire—where the threat is immediate, direct, and obvious to the senses, my cancer has (knock wood) not yet announced its presence, except through the mechanism of medical diagnosis and therapy—that, and doctors of all stripe persistently asking how I'm managing my pain (to which I am fortunate enough to answer, for now, "I'm not experiencing any pain").
That said, I suppose one could step back and observe that everyone is, every day and to one degree or another, in the fight of their lives. It's just people in my condition are more aware of the fact, to a greater or lesser extent.
This is something of a generalization of an epiphany I experienced while trying to "put aside" a particularly persistent maudlin question, variations of which have been bullying their way into my consciousness all too often over the past month or so.
Said question announces itself with the words "What if this is the last time I'm..."—followed by some activity, such as "celebrating a birthday?" or "putting up a Christmas tree?" It's almost as if I'm expecting that, whatever it is I'm doing, I'm doing for the last time.
Permit me to digress with a specific instance...
Back near the beginning of December, while Galina was still in New York, I happened to pass by a Goodwill store and stopped to hold the door for a customer that had just bought a used Christmas tree. As I watched the woman push the cart and the oversized box into the parking lot, I got to thinking about how, ever since the kids went out on their own, Galina and I have put up any Christmas decoration only sporadically, and not at all in recent years.
And it occurred to me that seeing some sort of tree in the house would be nice this year, even if it was a tree that had been used, used, used and teetered on its last legs as it did its job. I don't know what prompted that thought, maybe it was living alone in the house with only the animals for company while Galina was up north, maybe it was something else.
So I turned around, went into the store, found a suitable tree, and bought it. My first impression, upon opening the box at home, was that my whimsical specification—"used, used, used," etc.—had actually been fully satisfied, the tree was little more than a pile of junk, and the sum benefit of having bought it was the support I had shown for Goodwill Industries and the organization's work. Still, I set about assembling the tree, just to see what it was I had bought.
And it was while I was inserting the middle section of the tree into the bottom section that the thought crossed my mind—"What if this is the last Christmas tree I'm putting up?" And I stood there, for a moment, both aware of the question and resentful of the fact that it had occurred to me...
And then—bless that doggedly optimistic part of my mind—I realized that everyone could ask themselves the same question with equal validity, but it's pretty much only people like me, who are or have been made aware of their mortality, that ever get around to asking it. And not just about Christmas trees.
With that realization, I found it no task at all to put aside the question and to turn my full attention to being mindful of what I'm doing—bending the wire "boughs" to best advantage, noticing the texture of the plastic pine "needles," restringing the lights, and so on—which is what all of us should be doing anyway, no matter what our condition or activity.
And you know what? The question has all but stopped popping up in my head. Even better, once I got the tree assembled, it looked pretty good!
Cheers...
