up, down, flat

 i haven't had a lot to say lately. in between the drama/trauma of appointments, treatment days, scans, and scan results, life in cancer land is made up of these huge silences. mostly they are made up of waiting for said appointments, treatment days, scans, and scan results, and they are boring in a slightly terror-inducing way. 

it feels like this today. the giant Clock of Life is above me, loudly ticking off the seconds. I think the medication I'm on is working (a little? a lot?) but I don't know for sure, and I do know it can change at any moment. every three weeks when i head to the cancer center for an infusion, i know they will take my blood, check my labs, and know something they didn't know the last time. 

they'll know something is working because the numbers keep lowering. or something's plateau-ing because the numbers aren't moving. or worse, more cancer is likely growing because the numbers are going up. they're looking for patterns, trends. even tho i have asked not to know specific numbers, they will still tell me: up, down, flat. the trajectory of the disease continues whether or not i intellectually participate in it. 

today is a good example. today is downright boring. i had a little freelance work to do and that helped a little in the way of distraction, but a phone call from the hospital inserted itself into my day -- just an appointment reminder -- but still. just in case i'd forgotten for even 20 minutes, something will remind me. 

i got something from a bathroom drawer last night and forgot to close it, and when i'm in the bathroom today i see inside: the tops of 30 or 40 different pharmacy pill bottles i've accumulated over the last 2 years. in the corner of my workspace, 2 boxes of medical supplies left over from that time after my surgery when the wound was not healing. i can't tell you how many times i used to daydream about how good it would feel to finally throw all those fuckers in the trash! 

but either i got too dispirited or lazy or tired of waiting for a day I could confidently do that. I'm coming up on my 2-year anniversary of being diagnosed, so maybe i'm finally just accepting the integration of the monster into my life. 

on a nicer note (i think), i think have amassed about 50 odd poems or so trying to makes sense of this shitshow. they're not all good and they're probably not all poems, either, but they're enough to start working with, i guess. enough to start another manuscript. 

even if i can't imagine someone wanting to read a whole book of poems about this stuff, it's a creation of sorts. some of the awfulness turned into something less awful. there is that. 

death anniversary

a year ago today, my father died. that's weird to think that he died before the entire world changed. that people were able to congregate at a memorial service, etc. he died before my cancer came back, before i signed another 3-year lease for another car, wondering if i'd live to the end of it, not knowing the only place i'd drive it for the next 12 months was to the hospital and back (this is seriously a shame, because the car is reddish-orange MINI cooper with black racing stripes  -- it resembles a sexy kind of beetle, and it really deserves to show that off, speeding along on exciting road trips). 

these death anniversaries conjure up the oddest thoughts. 

i am just back from the cemetery where my sister who had brought along a snow shovel, spent 15 minutes clearing a path from the car to my dad's marker. my mom waited in my sisters car (they are both vaccinated) and i waited in mine. the snow was so deep and the path so skinny that we had to take turns walking up, saying whatever we wanted to say, and come back for the next person. 

i went first. i had brought along a big heart-shaped candle given to me as a gift a long time ago, in early cancer days. i placed it in the snow next to what seemed to be a small christmas tree (my dad was jewish, but not everyone in this cemetery is), and i tried to light it about 14 times because i thought it'd be nice to see it burn even briefly, but the wind was not cooperating. i read a few poems i liked, one sad and one more hopeful and then i told my father i loved and missed him, and asked if he could like, look out for me in a very specific way, help me you know, live longer, etc. 

i used to believe without question that something like this would totally work, that the dead were listening, that they were there somehow, especially on the anniversary of leaving this world. i thought life, to paraphrase my old friend Rilke, has not forgotten me, that it holds me in its hand and will not let me fall  

now I just don't know. it's still a pretty  thought, but it's been a hell of two years.

i don't know where i'm going with this post. i have no wisdom around any of it. i still have flashbacks around everything that happened with my dad, especially in his final days. i still remember the last words i said to him ("i love you and i'll see you tomorrow"). i still expect to feel his presence or whatever, but i haven't yet. 

as for me, as far as i know, the maintenance drug is keep me stable (scan in march will confirm), i'm well enough to go for walks when there's not a foot and a half of snow on the ground, do freelance work, my own work. to look at me now you'd never know what's going on inside. 

i guess that is my measure of wellness now. this is such a weird day. 

of the poems i considered reading to my dad today, this one felt the most right, even tho the title freaked me out a little at first: 

Dear Lovely Death
By Langston Hughes

Dear lovely Death
That taketh all things under wing
Never to kill
Only to change
Into some other thing
This suffering flesh,
To make it either more or less,
But not again the same
Dear lovely Death,
Change is thy other name.