In silence

Well. I was planning to tell you how last week I drove through the insanely beautiful-in-Fall part of Massachusetts to my meditation class, soaking up the said beauty. I wanted you to know how the whole nature thing was really doing it for me in terms of calm, and being present, and how a line the leader read from a book before we were to all sit: How do you find your way? In silence. 

I was planning also to tell you that because a teeny tiny pinhead-sized hole at the top of my mostly-healed abdominal scar refuses to close, I have to go back to the hospital so the surgeon can check it out, i.e. cut back in and see what's up. Most likely it's a stitch that did not dissolve after my surgery in June. It's not a huge deal apparently. It's a little deal. I keep repeating that to myself.

I even had planned a mildly humorous line about how it has to do with stitches and the procedure is happening on Halloween hahahaha. And then.

And then later that week my cousin died, ill for a long time.

And then the next day my father was in the ER with a tingling right hand, which turned out to be a mass on his neck, possibly compressing his spinal cord.

And so now my own concerns about my identity after cancer, about taking the PARP inhibitor and its side effects, about my own longevity or lack thereof, those I need to push to the side.

Now it is about my cousin, who I knew was sick, but did not guess was getting worse. Who I hadn't seen in years. Now it is about my 83-year-old father who has never spent a day of his life in a hospital, who is now surely going to be spending a lot longer than that.

My illness is not the only illness, my fears few among millions. A small drop, really. And yet it feels like the earth below my feet is threatening to crack entirely open. And the only way through is through.