Seashells

It’s no coincidence that my first chemo session landed on my birthday.

I always try to spend my birthdays alone, on a new adventure, with lots of quiet time for meandering thoughts.

Technically speaking, sitting in a chemo chair for the first time conforms exactly to my birthday criteria: alone, new, quiet. Apparently, God knows (and has a sense of humor!) I chuckle and embrace this gift.

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There were a few more new adventures in the few days leading up to my birthday.
I cried out of fear for the first time; not out of fear of cancer or death, but out of fear of this ominous monster called Chemo. (Fyi, as opposed to cries out of anger which are potent and energetically-targeted, cries out of fear are more searching, as if calling out to anyone who might be listening.)

For the first time, I felt a fierce love for my body. It is the vehicle through which I experience the world, and yet I did not appreciate it enough. (While I take care of it with food and exercise, I also demand a lot from it – I don’t sleep, I stress too much.) I felt such sadness and protective love for this body knowing that it would soon be put through even more.

And for the first time, I understood the saying “life is short”. It’s like the Filipino sungka game — if you asked me how many seashells each player has, I’d say “many”. (They actually have only 49; 7 seashells in each of the 7 buckets). Of course intellectually, I always knew that we have a finite number of years. But if you asked me how many years, I’d say “many” — enough to build a life, build a home, retire, travel. Middle age and the pandemic changed that answer to “less”. But the world of illness offered concrete numbers. When your oncologist mentions “5-year survival rates”, and co-cancer-warriors pray for “another 10 years”, you start thinking of your own number. What is enough? What is ideal? But whichever number I landed on — a sungka bucket? two buckets? maybe double that? — I realized that number is really not “many”.

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What do I do with my remaining buckets?

While speaking to an audience, Eckhart Tolle asked: do you need “25 years of eating, 25 years of taking your dog for a walk, going on vacation, seeing more sunsets, adding more life experiences? Is that the real purpose of your life?”
That struck me. I shouldn’t be spending my seashells on the same horizontal trajectory. I really should be planning to come out of this on a slightly higher plane.

Pema Chodron, a Buddhist monk, says we should use the moments, days, years of our lives to become wiser and kinder. The source of wisdom is in every moment.
That calmed me. I don’t have to be a monk or found a charity to reach that higher plane. I can reach wisdom from where I am.

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I heard a funeral director say that an essential element to a good funeral is Stories. A person is not facts. She is Stories.

I will take that, not as a prescription for dying, but as instructions for living. Don’t just fast forward to the good parts, the mere facts. (“She was a good student. He was a dedicated employee. She dressed well and kept a beautiful home. He cured thousands of people.”) Instead, roll in the whole mess of the story — the hows, the whys, the conflicts, the plot twists, the characters that come in and out. Linger over the funny bits, the triumphant bits, the sad bits, the downright scary bits. Participate fully in its unfolding. Seize every single second for it is the path to wisdom.

If things go as planned, I should be emerging from my treatments next year on my golden birthday. A “cancer survivor”, hopefully. But I won’t fast forward. There are full chapters still to live before that. For now, I will delight in the birthday flowers waiting for me at 4am as I prep for the day; I will search for calm while the doctors are taking too long finding a vein fat enough in which to insert my central catheter; I will bask in the music they play to calm me down; I will fascinate at my frost-biting toes submerged in ice; I will enjoy the chat with my Barbie-looking chemo roommate who is giving me tips on how to keep my eyebrows and lashes. I will remember that every single second is divinely written. There are no coincidences.

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Thank you soooo much for your birthday greetings, for your constant words of encouragement, for the love and light you emit, for the prayers and masses you offer, for the texts you send to simply ask how I am doing. I treasure all of these so much.

Photo credit: The Photomix Company