living ontologically

A few weeks ago the most surprising thing happened: I woke up at 5 AM urinating in my sleep.

It probably goes without saying that this hadn't happened to me in a very long time; a sort of wake up call from the ethers. I made coffee and retreated to my living room to write down my very vivid dream. Cocktail party, shakers and movers, seduction, furtive glances, playful bon-mots; in essence it was reminiscent of my life in my 20's in Paris: .

For some reason while writing I found myself called to reach for Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" which I opened randomly and began to read. The section was about living a "provisional life", one which is a sort of painful parenthesis on real life, a parenthesis with little meaning or goal. Frankl developed this notion by watching fellow prisoners in the concentration camps and their difficulty dealing with not knowing when their imprisonment would end. Heidegger I believe wrote about a very different way of being: ontological living i.e. living fully in the moment as if we may die the next.

As I was writing all this even though I was quite happy with my life I remember wishing I were living more ontologically, with more honesty and boldness, less hesitancy. I actually found myself going to fond memories of my own health struggles in the early 90's during which learned men in white coats assured me with absolute certainty that I would be dead before my 40th birthday. At that time I remember being so frank, so blatant, so present to my own life and the bigger Life.

Alas what my delusional mind had conveniently managed to omit from this memory were the many long moments of abject sorrow, long nights of crying myself to sleep from fear of pain and the unknown and the difficult awareness (both reassuring and frightening) of being absolutely alone in the face of certain choices concerning my health and my body.

Last night in the hospital with Tad through blurred vision I slowly came out of my slumber to hear my beloved struggling through terrible chills and with each deep breath uttering, "Oh my god; oh my god". Such was the pain of breathing in that state of what the nurses call "rigors".

He was freezing as he has been several times in the last three days and needed blankets. The nurse at his side on the other hand had one single goal in mind: get a proper reading of his blood pressure, a task which evaded her again and again for some reason.

I suppressed my urge to insult her and bark commands at her and instead got out of my foldaway bed, walked around her and began to cover him with layers of blankets. When I was done I lie down next to him pressing my warm body against his and wrapping my arms around his chest from behind. I held his shaking body in mine and whispered soothing words in his ear while she walked out the door. Though I believe it felt good for him to feel me there I actually can't be certain.

One thing I am absolutely certain of however is that only he could feel the pain. As much as I yearned for it to go away, as much as I wanted my own suffering (caused by seeing him suffer) to go away, I knew that in reality there was nothing I could do but be a witness to his pain.

This reality continues to be unbearable. I am a do-er, a person who does, a compulsive. I find solace in doing, undoing and redoing.

I would like to believe the many staff people working around him are doing everything they absolutely can to keep him healthy and help him survive this cancer. But the part of me that wants to do, the part of me that can't bear just sitting and watching, finds fault with them, wants to yell at them: Make it go away!! Don't just stand there - Make it go away!!

Today I'm living ontologically in a way I could never have imagined. There are incredible moments of bliss such as when we joke, look into each others' eyes, cry together or even this afternoon as I swam my laps in the gym slowly counting each breath in a way that felt so much more alive than two weeks ago. But then there are incredible moments of pain and learning to let go.

"God grant me the serenity..."