I had a wonderful and very sweet nurse during this fourth round of chemo ask me if I felt I'd changed or learned anything in the recent months due to my fourth stage cancer diagnosis, or had any kind of epiphany about anything. I understood his question and can guess at why he asked me. I talk about this stuff, and death, and life, and the things that have changed in my day-to-day world due to undergoing chemotherapy quite readily and openly. It's easy to talk to me about this. It's no secret.
But epiphanies?
I said no, then, but I meant yes.
I wish I could tell you I've learned something extraordinary or meaningful to someone else, or had some kind of clear-eyed burgeoning in my appreciation of people and things a little more. I wish I could tell you I had more knowledge of this end game. I wish I could speak of all the things that have meant so much to me for so long, things I haven't verbalized, things I still only catch at the periphery of my mind, the things that sooth and please. But right now, I'm not so articulate.
When I got home today, I thought of simple things, of silliness, of my kids and my dogs, and in a roundabout, very minor way, Eckhart Tolle. Minor, I say, because I don't place much weight in a lot of talking about an etching of time we can't even see or touch and if it needed to be talked about and cherished so damn much, now would be a hell of a lot longer. Ah, I'll leave Mr. Tolle for another time.
All I can really tell you is what my year-old puppy Jabba has known from birth – that belly rubs are the be-all, end-all of heaven itself.
When I come home from the hospital at the end of my five day chemo cycle (just finished a fourth cycle Monday), one of the first things I do is reach down towards Jabba when I come in my front door. Jabba happily stops her goofy jumping and gazing and plops over on her back; she knows "THE HAND" is on the way to the belly. This knowing/memory is completely magical to me.
She's both the silliest and most beautiful dog I've ever had, with such pure silk and blondness in her fur and face and a total awkwardness in her body movements. She just doesn't seem bright enough to make it through a long puppy day. But, really, she knows who she is. I know she lives for food. And belly rubs. Anytime, any place, no reason.
As soon as I touch that furry belly and see her gangly legs stretched out towards the four corners of a room, it calms me. Silly, eh. I'm home.
I see nothing so serious as another loving face, an acceptance that one minute follows the next, and that each hour, each day is just this packing on of moments, one to the next. To anticipate something bad or good someone tells you is coming or might be coming, or will inevitably arrive (at least in terms of medical knowledge and statistics), is to lose all the bits between now and that distant (or near? Who knows?) future. To lose it to grief or depression or anger or fear – well, at this moment, I can't do it. I pick a minute ahead and place it in front of this one. And then I'll do it again. And again. For as long as I can.
The cumulative minutes as they fall behind me like dominoes, or stretch like elastic between two cans, the tin cans I use to communicate with past and future, will measure the lengthening of this clock, maybe allow me a calculated pleasure in a chosen moment. It may, too, stretch the pain, but it's feeling. If feeling exists, then surely right now it can be tuned by a fine belly rub from a favorite human, or tweaked with the touch of soft peach-colored dog fur on fingertips, warmed in brown puppy eyes that gaze in love and trust.
My human minutes combined with dog minutes and turned into belly rubs could mean dog treats missed and squirrels not chased.
Jabba doesn't seem to mind.
(Jabba at two weeks)
It's a kind of epiphany. A minor one perhaps.