Transformation & Rod McKuen

It was the summer of 1967; I had just graduated from high school and was going to spend the summer in New Hampshire working at a YMCA camp.  The love of my life, my mom, was losing her battle with cancer, and I knew deep inside my life was would never be the same.  Rod McKuen’s songs and poetry about love and loneliness had kept me company for many years and on the plane ride to New Hampshire the tears flowed as his lyrics “If you go away on this summer day….” played again and again in my head.

Have you ever had a moment when you wished you could be someone else?  Sitting on the plane with tears streaming down my face I so needed to be someone else.  When the camp director picked me up at the airport, I told him “this summer I need to find a new me, and I was going to be Shawn McDowell, not Billy Baun”.  In his wisdom, he recognized and honored my need, and that summer everyone knew me as Shawn McDowell, a kid from Louisiana.  The kid that mosquitos didn’t bite, was not afraid of snakes and wrote to his mom almost every day.

Today, I sat with my oncologist and studied the body and bone scans that showed my cancer had spread to several new places on my backbone, right adrenal gland, ribs, and the tumor on my left hip was larger.  April 11^th I will start chemotherapy by infusion one-treatment every-three-weeks.  As I sat listening to my oncologist talk about the potential side effects, for just a moment I was back in New Hampshire with Shawn McDowell experiencing life as he learned to open Billy’s heart.  As I walked out, Rod McKuen’s lyrics played again in my head, “But if you stay / I’ll make you a day / Like no day has been / Or will be again”.   Billy was back and his love of life and passion for experiencing every day fully brought the promise of living mindfully through an open heart, no matter the journey.  Are you having moments you wish you could be someone else?  Stay you, mindful of making your days, like no days have been, or will be again.