is that a rope or a snake?

My spiritual practice teaches me to live one day at a time, one moment at a time, one breath at a time.

This has been an incredible gift for me, a man who has always lived his life tilted forward in movement.

It is particularly difficult when I am planning something for the future. How do I stay present while organizing that fabulous trip to Greece and Switzerland? How do I remain grounded while developing a professional project with budgets, timelines and deadlines? It's a hard balance to find: between projecting into the future then coming back to the present as honestly as possible.

But this gets worse when I'm projecting scary things into the future.

According to some studies this is what we do all the time with mini-thoughts and emotions. I hear something (usually about change) and I immediately without knowing it wonder about how that thing affects me, others and the future, even if it's only for a flash of a second.

So when the man you love is connected to two plastic tubes injecting noxious chemicals into his body it's not surprising that I project into a scary future. Not exactly a trip to Switzerland.

I've gone way beyond future-tripping over the scariness of the word "cancer". That was three lives ago AKA last Saturday.

Now I grapple with the scariness of chemo and leukemia. The documents we've been given tell us he will get mouth sores, nausea, lose his hair, fevers, opportunistic infections.

Thus every time I touch his beautiful face and it feels a little warm, I leave the present moment. Everytime he complains of an ache I wonder if this is the beginning of the end.

In a way if I'm just in my fear and projecting into some fantasized future that's not real, then I am already creating a distance from him, from myself and from reality. Maybe that's the pay-off: scary future-tripping allows me to not feel the unbearable pain of reality.

And then there are the mental excursions my imagination and I go on almost voluntarily, the what-ifs.

What if he..

Dies?
Gets really sick?
Can't pay his bills?
Doesn't say good bye to his dad?
goes into a coma?

What if other people....

don't get the opportunity to say good bye?
to spend precious time with him like I have?
don't get to hold his hand?

What if I...

Am not strong enough?
Can't stay present and lose myself in fear?
Can't get back to my own life?
Lose him for good?

I am aware that these mental machinations are only sources of pain.

Yet studies show that people who read the "in case of emergency" placards in airplanes are actually better equipped to handle an accident.

How do I find that safe place between preparing somehow (but for what?) and staying present?
How do I handle my panic for instance when I call and can't get through and I imagine the worst?
How do I live in "Now"?