Barbara's Excellent Adventure

Serious Business

“Don’t worry, be happy"

--Bobby Ferrin

The process is intensifying. After the first sequence of chemo, we went to Palm Desert for our annual family holiday vacation. I had a few very manageable side effects, as well as a respite from the chemo process. We returned in time for my next infusion on Dec. 27^th. Experienced chemo survivors have told me that the intensity is cumulative, so I’m not surprised that I am feeling more limited after this week. Kathy said it’s a fatigue like nothing she’d ever experienced, and I’m just beginning to understand what she means. So far, it’s strictly physical, though. What I’m experiencing is in the body – the spirit remains entirely willing and open to all the new revelations. One after another, what were only concepts in my mind are manifesting as veritable realities that I experience in my body, spirit and soul. I am recognizing just how powerful is my need to control, all the while thinking that I was learning to let go. Well, I was, ever so slowly, but more able to talk about it than to enact it. Now, even though, much of the time, I still have a choice, I am discovering that it is much easier to let go, and let others take over. Most surprising to me is the new-found freedom and joy in the surrender. Whatever the fear was that underlies my need to be in charge, it is gone, replaced by the sweetest experience of relationships that I have ever had.

Our Palm Desert holiday was everything I have ever wanted from a family gathering. Not laboring under some requirement that I be at the center of the action released me to be a playful participant in the activities as they evolved without interference. Only once did I try to make something happen. It did not go well, convincing me not to try that again! Van and I had four delicious days with gorgeous weather, just the two of us. Peter and Denise, Holden and Courtney (son, grandson and their S.O.’s) joined us for a week, which overlapped for four days with Elizabeth, Joe and Jesse (daughter and her children), and son John. I had packed a few decorations and suggested that if anyone wanted a tree, I’d be up for it. The outcome was the loveliest of trees, provided by Peter and Denise, with help from Courtney and me. We did have rain - an opportunity for games and movies and working the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle provided by Holden and Courtney. Every day, rain or shine, started for me with the hot tub jets soothing a painful spot on my back, followed by a therapeutic, body-stretching swim in the warm, warm pool. Three pleasant days later, Elizabeth, Joe, Jesse, Van and I headed home.

For the first time, an inner voice is beginning to question, “will this be the last time I will go to Palm Desert…trim a Christmas Tree…buy face powder…or moisturizer?” So far, any discomfort that I experience has not masked the aliveness, curiousity, appreciation that I so keenly feel. As never before, I understand what Mary Oliver means when she writes:

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.