Four years in remission - Pausing to give thanks

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a grave site
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

               Rainer Maria Rilke


Technically, my four year post treatment anniversary is not for another three weeks, but I had my four year check with my ENT doc today.  After the check, he said I was a "poster child" for stage four cancer recovery.   I pause to give thanks... to God, to family and friends who carried me through that ordeal.  

Every time I drive up to Omaha's Methodist Hospital (now down to once every six months) and walk through those doors, I am triggered/flooded with memories at a visceral level. I walk by the wheelchairs at the entrance to the oncology center and am reminded of the days I was too weak to walk from the car to the radiation room.   I walk past the restroom where I stood hunched over the toilet vomiting in weakness, nausea (and despair); I get on the elevator that carried me to the chemo induction room and I feel  the memory in my body.   My first glimpse of the ENT as he walks into the exam room where I am waiting brings me back to the day I went for my results of the PET scan after treatment and the words which were delivered like a blunt knife to the heart... "The scan showed there are still some cancer cells - we need to consider the options."  These words were NOT delivered directly to me, but overheard as the ENT left the door open (was it really an accident?)  in the exam room and walked next door to consult with his resident. By the time he came back to tell me essentially the same news in a watered-down way, I felt like I was dying right there in that room.   The heaviness of that moment will forever be carried in my being.   For the better part of those several months of treatment , it progressively felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean of darkness, with momentary exhilarations of the Spirit in my being, feeling touched by God and the kindness of a few friends, family,  and strangers that I met in cyberspace through this blog.   I remember Diane, a cyber-friend who gave me so much encouragement, while she herself was fighting a losing battle with Leukemia - it is now three years since her passing.  Today I felt a pang of guilt for not sufficiently thanking her for faithfully commenting encouraging words on this blog and the other blog,  as I posted about my journey through treatment. 

So, about that poem above... it's perfect for what I am feeling today.  I am feeling that sense of being birthed from the graveyard of cancer to a wide and timeless place.   I am looking back on "the dark hours of my being" and thanks to Rilke, I am embracing those hours as the birthing pains of the life I now enjoy.  Oh, I am not some totally new being of joy and light, but I do have a deeper sense of joy and appreciation for everything residing in the depths.  I am still on a deepening spiritual journey, I am still discovering the longing I have to know God and the mystery of His working in my life, I am still trying to be a better husband to Kathy, and I am still working out all the insecurities and frailties of my fragile psyche.   But, I am writing with a smile deep inside my soul.  I think that's the truth. I really think that's the truth as my fingers dance across this keyboard. 

Thanks for reading!