What would you do?
I’ve written close to 300 pieces on NET cancer and what happened to Jane and me as a result of our too close encounter with it. The last two weeks I have had trouble coming up with things to write about I have not talked about before. To be honest, I have had trouble writing about NET cancer period for the last several weeks.
Wisdom is learning from the experiences of others.
It is not just that I am having trouble with subject matter–it is that I am having trouble with the entire subject. My emotions are wrung out. I find myself slipping back into the memories of two years ago–and they are not pretty memories. I lose myself in books and magazines and politics–anything that will take my mind away from these draining images of Jane’s last months–of our last months.
For three days now I have tried to do basic cleaning chores. I have managed to pick up the living room in that time. I look at the computer, pick up a magazine or a book, intending to read just one article or chapter, check my email–I look up and hours have passed–and I have nothing done. Or nearly nothing.
Time gets away from me
I come into WordPress to write my daily NET cancer piece. I stare at the blank screen. I start to write. My internal voice says, “You know you’ve written about this before.” I erase everything as I realize I have nothing new to say about that aspect of the disease. Our knowledge of NET cancer grows steadily but there is often nothing new or meaningful to share–at least nothing that will fill the 500 words I assign myself every day.
I hate cancer.
And always–at the edge of vision–I see Jane. I see where we were today. I know that tomorrow would be a Dana-Farber Day–a day consumed on either end with traffic and filled with waiting rooms and labs and hope and despair. I know that tonight we would try to watch some television to try to take our minds away from the gruesomeness that would be tomorrow.
NET cancer and the Bard
“And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on at its petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time…”
Only Shakespeare’s canon has the strength to say what passes through my mind–then and now. I stand–and stood–“like Patience on a monument smiling at grief.”
And always–at the edge of vision–I see Jane.
A guy I used to teach with came home from Boston to die last week. He is not yet gone–his body has some weeks left. But I can see him–as I still see Jane–in my mind’s eye. I hate cancer. I hate what it does to the mind, to the body, to the soul. I hate the way it feels to look a someone and know there is nothing I can do to help. I hate what it does to the family and the spouse.
NET cancer killed the us
Oh, sure, I can raise money–and I do. But Jane is beyond the help of all my fundraising efforts–as is my old friend and sparring partner. Death sunders friendships–and what it does to lovers cannot even begin to be described.
My emotions are wrung out.
Intelligence, they say, is learning from your own experiences. Wisdom is learning from the experiences of others. But this emptiness is not something I can share in any meaningful way, save this: to let it drive me to help find cures for all this pain so others do not experience it.
So I work to kill NET cancer–and all the other cancers out there. It is a foolish quest–one far beyond my strength–but one I must try no matter how quixotic logic says it is.
But I will find a way to kill NET cancer.
