I get to be here for this

On Weds. when the IV line went in and I said, “Ouch, I’ve never felt it hurt that much before. Can you check it again?” I asked the nurse? It felt like it went through my vein rather than in.

She checked the blood return and said it was fine. But it didn’t feel fine and I could imagine the future bruise I’d wear on my arm. When my regular nurse came I mentioned to her that it hurt.

To mention my own pain was brave for me.

But when the same nurse disparaged “the druggies and the homeless people” on the T that kept her from coming into work I didn’t say a word. I didn’t say, it is less them and more the ones who don’t wear masks at all that worry me.

I chose silence. I looked out the window.

I didn’t have the energy to challenge her, and felt bad, as I thought of all my friends and family in recovery, and how it would have felt if I were them hearing her words.

I thought of mentioning that my now-dead father was homeless, as if to say, I am not someone you can talk about homelessness with like that. But how to respond when pricked by someone’s ignorance especially when that someone was who I might need to revive me if I have an allergic reaction or needed medical attention. Because of COVID, cancer patients can no longer bring anyone in to the hospital on infusion days. I felt alone and small.

Earlier that day, Dr. P, my oncologist and I chatted and I shared how glad I am to be able to be here for my daughter. I told him, my new mantra is, “I get to be here for this.”

He looked confused.

“This is anything other than dead,” I said.

Instead of getting upset at things that used to upset me, I now think, “I get to be here for this. Alive.” Sometimes, though not religious, I bow my head to the sky in gratitude. “Thank you for letting me be here for this.”

I see a sunflower in my driveway, “I get to see this.”

My dog Ella is extra cuddly, “I get to feel this.”

My dog stinks after being skunk sprayed, “I get to smell this.”

I’m stretched at work, “I get paid to experience this.”

My daughter wakes me in the middle of the night for something, “I get to be here for her.”

“Oh,” he said, “Now I get what you mean,” and I realized he forgot that death is always chasing me and in my awareness. He’s a minister too so I could share that the whole “lucky-to-be-alive” thing now feels like a blessing not a cliche. Often, in fact, I am often in conversation with the universe saying, “Thank you,” “I see you,” and “I’m here now.” Somehow, cancer has cured me of any sign of the PTSD that used to haunt me daily and made me feel like a ghost in my own life.

“Can I share that story with others?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said, saying, “I wish people could feel this without getting cancer.”

I wondered if I should also share how often I fear my own pain, illness, and death because I do. I didn’t tell him how often I get the death notices and announcements of others with this same disease or the ones, younger or who were diagnosed more recently, and still died.

I don’t say how death is always hovering overhead, a shadowy figure I will never shake now that I’ve been diagnosed with advanced cancer with a very high recurrence rate.

My coming death is something I have to learn to live with and so I focus on the alive part. It’s not that I didn’t know all humans are terminal before but I didn’t let that awareness change me.

I get to be here for this.
I get to be here for this.
I get to be here for this.

This is anything and everything that one can experience while alive.

Sebane Selassie writes in her new book: You Belong: A Call for Connection, the following:

“As the late Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck said: Joy is exactly what’s happening minus our opinion of it. She made a distinction between joy and happiness – Happiness has an opposite: unhappiness. Joy is not about happy or unhappy, liking or disliking. Joy is accepting each moment for what it is without contention.”

Selassie has battled three rounds of breast cancer, once at stage 3 and twice as stage 4. I’m not sure I’d even understand what an actual experience is minus my opinion of it if I didn’t get cancer and if daily life did not require me tending to my body and practical matters 24/7 making my opinions, feelings, and reflections – which I thought made me who I was – actually a luxury if not a total waste of time. I know I wouldn’t even understand what this quote is saying if I didn’t get cancer but I still hope others can and will without having this diagnosis.

Now, everyday life doesn’t break up with me feels like a win. I celebrate now even while I am afraid, tired, and even though I’m not yet as brave or as wise as I wish to be.

And it is joy.