Spring got to Tennessee while I was gone. When I finally came home from too much rambling (Tucson, Reno, Puerto Rico, New York), the first blooms were already fading. My hardy daffodils, which popped up in early February, had lost their glowing yellow heads, and wearing only their long green sepals, stood like lanky little sentinels between my neighbor's yard and mine. The forsythia was full-on frothy yellow, and I hadn't even seen the light green fuzz of buds unfurling. My neighbor's early hyacinths had lived better days by the time I lighted in the driveway, and the stinking Bradford pears, bald when I left, were shedding white petals like fast-falling snow. But the season hasn't been a total loss. My so-called-memorial-cherry-tree was still blooming five years and a day after we planted it in the back yard. Also, husband and I got over to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens for the tulips and found them sleek and bright, still holding on strong.
And that's what's happening generally, a lot of holding on. For instance, I got to have another birthday, my fifth since I was first diagnosed with a birthday-stealing disease. That makes fifty-nine and has me looking forward to finishing this decade around the same time next year, hoping to be as healthy as someone with metastatic cancer can be. That thought never crossed my mind five years ago.
But I know not to take this relatively long period of disease stability for granted. Or to complain. Because things could, of course, be otherwise. The trick, as always, is to live every day with this diagnosis as if it's, well, a day I might not have had, but a day I do have, but not a day that defines everything about who I am or what my life means, but a special day, but an ordinary day nonetheless, but a day that counts, and who's counting? And why does it make me nervous? And is that a long dark train I hear?
So yeah, I finally saw a therapist, because, obviously.
And as one does in therapy we talked about how when you have a diagnosis of an illness like this stupid cancer, that goes into and out of remission, that behaves mysteriously, takes victims indiscriminately, etc. etc...how everything, EVERYTHING feels URGENT, how you don't want to WASTE ANY OF THESE PRECIOUS MOMENTS, but you still have to clean the bathroom and put away the laundry and make some dinner and pay some bills, and do some work, and, well, do all the things. And look after your people.
And people you know are dying of the same disease you have.
And you still have to be you, living your meandering, uncollected, disorganized life, same as it ever was. And even though you're doing the work to address your issues with mortality, to let go of whatever it is you are supposed to let go of, you're still schlepping the sorrow and grief and pain of the imperfect world and your increasingly imperfect self. Because, you've noticed that the longer you live, the more imperfect you and the world get. And once upon a time, you thought it was the other way around, that if you just did more of something and less of another thing and worked harder and tried your best, things—maybe even you— would at least...improve.
And that's not always so.
No matter, I say. Hold on.
