Yesterday I was really looking forward to getting back to the hospice and spending time with T, a thick-bearded, Harley-loving softie of a man whom I had fallen in love with just last week. Sadly when I arrived he was no longer verbal. In just a short week his brain cancer had silenced him.
Then as I was walking from the hospice to the weekly meditation place I love so much I found a huge multi-layered, flower-covered, ad-hoc sanctuary on one of my usual street corners. According to one of the cards on top a 23 year old girl who'd recently graduated college and moved to San Francisco -- her favorite -- was struck dead by a bus while crossing the street.
When I think about how fragile a human body is compared to say a MUNI bus I'm amazed that some of us live to be in our 80, or 90's.
Yesterday Tad made the decision to not continue chemo treatment. Clearly he will not make it to his 80's. He will probably not see 2012.
The oncologists conducted a bone marrow biopsy and have found lots of leukemia in his bone marrow and next to no healthy cells in his immune system. The chemo has wreaked havoc on his bones but the leukemia just keeps coming back - the strange tenacity of simple living organisms. The docs offered to treat with more chemotherapy but insisted any successful outcome is highly unlikely.
The truth is I have been yearning to go home with Tad for a long time now. I have been yearning to sit and watch TV with him, to cuddle with our cat, to prune flowers in the garden, to feel the love that has held us through so much.
The excruciating truth I have to live with is knowing we'll go home together but he'll leave the house on a stretcher no longer to shine his beautiful smile in my life.
And I hate that we have no choice in the matter.
My loving dad told me how much he has watched Tad's love transform me; how much more loving I have become since entering this relationship. Tad is easy to love. And somehow by loving him and being loved by him - I have learned to finally love myself.
So many people comment on how lucky we are to have this much love, what a rare thing it is. I can't bring myself to believe that. What I do believe - and how I find hope - is that love continues beyond physical bodies. And in deep love are strange powers and properties that remain a mystery to me.
Each time I've stumbled in life the solution has always been some form of "More love" or more accurately "Love more!"
May we all continue to "Love More" even when our hearts are lying on the floor aching from loss or the anticipation of loss.
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This is of course not the new phase we were all hoping for. I think it is beautiful and inspiring how you continue to find love and life in the middle of darkness and death. I hope I can have as much faith as you do when I face something like that. Blessings.
ReplyDelete- Julia