Throughout the day, I write my thoughts on straggly pieces of paper. They sit by my plate at the dinner table, next to the keyboard on my desk, and on the nightstand next to my pillow. Most of them eventually get typed into Evernote as fodder for my exploration of life and as ideas to explore in the memoir that may get written some year.
Tuesday night I wrote this to the Knower of All Things Cancer,
Can someone really do what Michael is trying to do - heal cancer through these various weird things? I realize that both the possible yes and the possible no answers blow my mind. If the answer is "No, he can't", he could die from this, and that knocks my feet out from under me. If the answer is yes, and there will be a time that Michael is cancer-free due to his daily jumping on a mini-tramp, his hot baths, and many pills and powders (among other things), then my brain will explode from the shift in reality. Gravity might as well quit working, and the sun can rise in the west. No matter the answer to my questions, I fear they will undo me.
Four days later, I saw my note on the table, and I suddenly let go of the need for answers. It has taken a long time to be able to witness with the eyes of an outsider this crazy-making thought pattern that took over my head when Michael decided to choose his way of dealing with cancer. What a mean trap - to think I need to know where this is all going. Ha! We never know where life is going. Why should I be the person who finally knows the future? And would I be at peace if I did know?
No worrying, controlling, getting angry, or wanting to know will change the outcome. And putting out so much energy to control now (a useless endeavor) in hopes for peace later is absolutely insane.
I remember all of the years that I felt compelled to run up the basement stairs as though my life depended on it. It wasn't the speed up the stairs that got my heart racing, but the knowledge that I had to outrun the boogeyman who was following me. At some point - maybe about the time I turned forty-five - okay, maybe I was nineteen - I admitted what I had always known somewhere deep down: there was no boogeyman in the basement. I was safe, and I had always been safe.
Well, I have been running away from the boogeyman of cancer and loss for over two years now. As of this past Saturday night, it is done. Put down. Life is not a boogeyman. I see its benevolence everywhere. It's all okay, even when we think it isn't. We can do this thing called Life, no matter what it brings. And right now, it's bringing me two dogs who are staring at me as if they want some attention or something. I can handle that.
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