When Illness Isn't Matter Enough to Matter

Last night after dinner at my retirement home I had the privilege of joining a 90-something for conversation and contemplation.

He expressed that he has been, "thinking," lately. His cancer is of the slow progressing kind, at his age chemotherapy and/or surgery would just be a waste of energy that could be better spent on "thinking," and enjoying his kids. He had hesitated to share his cancer choice, not wanting to deal with unwanted advice or pleas to "do all you can! Fight!" but, he quickly found in me a friend who would not question someones decision about how they walk their final path.

Our conversation turned from gun control to what he was "thinking about." His thoughts were an attempt to understand the twists and turns of his life---how he got to where he is. Now, for my blog followers, you know that is a subject I am greatly interested in. The idea of "letting the past go," is not my way of living. I much prefer knowing about my past, looking at how one piece of my puzzle connects to another, in fact I believe one lives IN the past, always. 

What would we BE without each past moment? Since you began reading this post, you have added to your past, not your future nor your present. That is why actions and words are so important---they form what our future will be. If you want children who have empathy, you must model for them what empathy is. "They grow up so fast," indeed we all do, because the past is forever knocking at our door and even if we hide, it will barge in. 

Too many people believe that living in the present is the key to that elusive "happy life." Yet, the most unhappy people I've ever known are those who fight to forget they have a past, ending up in a psychiatrist's office, crying when an event they chose to forget comes to the surface.

Books are delightful, but your own story is much more interesting and rewarding. Once you embrace you, then embracing anything else in life is like seeing color for the first time. I was curious what brought my conversation companion to his decision to examine his life. Was it simply the fact that his life was nearing its end? 

No, it was a free-time issue. He now had "time on his hands." Interesting  idiom, that, usually we are so busy rushing from one "must do" to another "to do" that we rarely have time on our hands anymore. As is we can hold time, think of it as a concrete concept, and have nothing to do with it but use it as a tool to build with---and what shall we build?

In today's world of electronics as friends, family, that which we just "can't live without," we usually turn to them to take the time from our hands; yet, afterwards, we moronically wonder, "Where did the time go?" This man has chosen instead to spend his time with himself, his 95 year old brain, and look at the wonders it holds, the mysteries, the love stories, failures, successes, mistakes and triumphs, along with the history of the world he lived in. How glorious he is! 

He allowed me to ask many questions about what he was exploring, and his illness was not one of his journeys. Why should it be? After the diagnosis, the doctor visits, the decisions made---time spent on such a weed is just folly, when there is so much more to plant and grow in fertile land.  We bent over whispering, flung ourselves back for belly laughs, stared into each others eyes (better to see the brain, shall we say the soul?) and had a marvelous time together.

"I am not sure what good this does me," he said at one point.

Not hiding my surprise, I said, "Look what it does! It fills you, makes more of you, then you can share it with others and it now fills ME! The lessons you learned, now I have learned. The failure you mentioned, I'll beware to ever make. You gift me, and you can now gift others."

He sat back in his chair, one hand on his walker, and said, "I'll have to think about that."