I have been feeling rather blue. Deep blue. Indigo. A fatigue that is physical, emotional, spiritual.
Not surprising, I suppose. In sixteen days I will turn sixty. Remarkable, really. I never thought I’d have the opportunity to grow old. It is a milestone, in so very many ways.
It also means that I can now say, with complete accuracy, that I have been living with lung cancer for one quarter of my life.
That’s a long time. And obviously primarily a positive–surviving has always been my objective. But it’s also really sad.
If my life is a pie, then cancer represents an enormous slice.
Choosing to become an advocate has lent my diagnosis purpose. It has been an opportunity to make some good out of what can only be characterized as a personal tragedy.
But there is much that cancer has taken that I simply cannot reclaim/override.
Innocence–mine and my children’s–financial security, the bloom of youth.
And then the loving and losing. It is both the best and the worst part of advocacy. Relationships which transcend the ordinary. Incredibly special connections, each of which has enriched life to an almost unimaginable degree. Precious. Precarious. Often fleeting.
This–and my own mortality. Each new day exhilarating but also exhausting. Life so full of possibility but also portent.
Overwhelming. Odd, glorious, awful. But also all I’ve got. This is it. This is mine. My life.
Until it’s not.
life and breath: outliving lung cancer 