Arm Saxophone Music

The couple lived near the Chattahoochee River that is the border between Alabama and Georgia, and we talked about our cancer struggles standing in line at the Genitourinary registration desk.  They were also both cancer survivors facing new challenges with their journeys.  As I looked around the waiting room, I saw couples waiting in many different ways.  Some men slept as their wives and families watched anxiously, one couple worked on a crossword puzzle, another tried to keep their grandkids under control reminding them several times to use their inside voices.  MaryBeth leaned on my shoulder, softly wrapping her fingers around my arm gently playing me like a saxophone.  The tune she played and her warmth helped me drift off as I felt the music deep inside “life has a way of working out”.   

In two weeks of flushing out the Sutent targeted chemo, my cancer markers were up and the tumors on my left hip and adrenal gland had grown.  My white and red blood cells counts were too low to start the docetaxel infusion, so we decided to wait a few days and scheduled my first infusion for Thursday afternoon.  My first thought after the delay decision was I had be given a 2-day reprieve and would be 100% present for MaryBeth and her surgery Wednesday morning.  As my oncologists left the treatment room MaryBeth and I stood, hugged, and as she wept, I felt deep inside, “Life has a way of working out”.  When I returned to my office I read an email from a good friend about my spirit of grit and patience, and I felt a smile deep inside “Life has a way of working out”.  Believe in life today!

Hope

Friday night MaryBeth drove us up to the lake house; I was exhausted by a week that seems to go on forever and drained by the intensity of feelings around my body and bone scans.  Many of my scan team members are like old friends and greeted me with smiles, hugs, and words of encouragement.  At some point as I lay on the scan tables with my eyes closed and the machinery whirling around me, I couldn’t help thinking about this journey and how my spirit has been touched and energized by so many of you and the intangible space we’ve shared. After my last scan, a touch on my shoulder brought me back from the forever moment I had slipped into, and as I slowly stood, I smiled as I thought about forever.  Forever / I sometimes dream / was yesterday / and today is the start / of tomorrow / and tomorrow / is what God / gave me hope for.  Where do you get that intangible feeling we call hope?  Me, it is from the intangible space I have shared with all of you.    

The Bell – Hanging Out

Gordon was my next-door neighbor; we were the same age and best friends.  We both loved to play in the ditch behind our houses that drained into the swamp.  His parents had hung a large old ship bell on the pecan tree that shaded their front yard.  When it was supper or bedtime, they would ring the bell and we would come running.  We could hear the bell in most of the places we played like the bamboo growth at the end of our street, or Dead Man’s pond that was several blocks away and at the edge of the swamp.  The neighbors across the street had huge backyards that were our ball fields and led to our elementary school.  Standing at the edge of our elementary school, we could still hear the bell. 

Yesterday, I heard the bell, and I had this image of Gordon and me looking at each other and then running home.  Gordon’s mom was a nurse, tall, thin and constantly smoking.  My mom was a little over five feet tall and very petite.  Both were standing under the pecan tree talking.  When they turned, both Gordon and I said together, “Can’t we hang out just a little longer?”  One of my mom’s favorite poems was Birches by Robert Frost.  The poem is about a farm boy too far from town for baseball and real friends, so he learned to play alone and became a Birch tree swinger climbing to the tops and then flinging feet first with a swish, kicking through the air to the ground. 

As my mom’s cancer journey got harder, she would ask me to read Birches and always had me repeat her favorite line , “I’d like to get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over.”  Today I do body and bone scans in preparation for a meeting with my oncologists on Monday.  The last two weeks I have only been on one oral chemo, washing out the other chemo from my system, so today’s scans will serve as a baseline for the infusion I will start next week.  This week as I have thought about my cancer journey getting tougher, I couldn’t help but think about my mom’s love for the poem Birches and her need to get away for a little while, to swish back and begin again, but then I heard the bell, and heard myself say, “Can’t I hang out just a little longer?”

It Only takes One Smile

Tuesday’s has become my day to led two labyrinth walks on the labyrinth that sits underneath four large live oaks trees next to the School of Public Health.  Our sky bridge sits right next to labyrinth, so I stand on the bridge and as employees, patients, caregivers, or visitors walk by I tell them about the labyrinth walk.  This week I have also been leading breathing circles where I use a centerpiece of balancing rocks surrounded by flowers, so Tuesday, I placed the centerpiece at my feet as I promoted the labyrinth walk on the sky bridge.  The centerpiece brought many questions and smiles. 

A pale, yellowish child with a bandage circling her head who was in a wheelchair pushed by her dad slowly passed by, her eyes stared at the centerpiece, and then she raised her head met my eyes and gave me a big smile.  Inside I could feel a smile grow that spread onto my lips and then my whole face.  Thich Nhat Hanh has taught us that, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”  As I watched her wheelchair turn the corner and disappear, I felt joy tears forming in my eyes.  Such a small sick child shared a smile that immediately brought us both joy.  Share your smile with a stranger and let joy transform the world. 

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

As I look in the mirror in the mornings, even more so now, I see my dad and it feels good having morning conversations with him.  Diagnosed with prostate cancer when he was 74, it took only a few years for him to need chemotherapy, which like me turned his hair and eyebrows a soft white.  My favorite picture of my dad is in 1935 when he was 21 and sitting on the back of his Packard convertible with a big grin and cool sunglasses.  Dad had a playful side he kept all his life that so many others lose as work, responsibilities, life challenges and disappointments begin to drain who they are or who they will become.  Several months before he died, he had us strap him and his oxygen bottle into a golf cart so he could watch us play 18 holes. 

Saturday, as I stood in my morning shower, I heard him call, “Billy”.  I hadn’t heard his voice for almost 25 years, but I had no doubt it was him.  I stood in the shower and cried joyful tears.  Next week I will start my chemotherapy and it felt so good to hear his voice, reminding me how he grinned through his chemo journey and never gave up hope.  What do you see when you look in the mirror in the mornings?  Maybe more important is what conversations are you having with what you see? 

Rhythm of Rest

What’s your rhythm of rest?  Do you take enough walks to sacred places?  Watch enough sunsets as dusk kisses the day goodbye?  Get up early enough just to watch the sunrise and feel the eternal promise found in a new day?  Do you mess enough outside to be grateful for all the colors that surround us, the new greens painted against the Texas blue sky?  Do you read enough books that bring on a good cry?  Write enough snail mail letters to friends just to tell them how much you care?  Take enough pictures with your phone or camera and saving and sharing these memory moments?  Do you do spend enough time in silence and stillness to feel your breath?  Do you smile and laugh enough with family and friends to feel the never ending life of love you’ve been given?  Are you sharing and passing on your rhythm of rest to others?    

Gone to the Woods to be Lovely

Lynn Ungar poetry touches our hearts because it speaks of what it means to be human and dwell deep within ourselves as we experience the miracle we call life.  Last night I walked through dreams filled with the fresh smell of rain, a woods filled with colors only rain can bring and Calla Lilies proudly lifting their heads up to heaven.  This morning several lines of Ungar’s poem Camas Lilies played repeatedly in my head, “And you – what of your rushed and useful life?  Imagine setting it all down - papers, plans, appointments, everything - leaving only a note: Gone to the fields to be lovely.  Be back when I’m through with blooming.”  If only our journeys could be that easy.  Last weekend I planted a row of Day Lilies against the University Blvd. side of our house, and when done I could feel tears of joy as I imagined the beauty of their blooms washed by a soft summer rain.  If only my journey could be that easy.