Sunday, December 12, 2010

Cancer Survivor!


.....I don't want to be remembered as a cancer survivor! A guy who "almost got run over by a freight train"! That is such a little story, just a tiny bit of who I am. You may call me "Lucky",



that would be far more defining. I could not have picked a better time to get this cancer and probably not a better cancer to get. It was the worst season in my memory for the garden, the



tomatoes sat in the cold and rain. The economy is mush and I wouldn't have worked much anyway. I picked last year for early Social Security and the checks just keep coming my way!



Last year I "discovered" painting and now have a whole new way to do the art I like to do!



Lucky cancer isn't a cement truck and I have plenty of time to reminisce, think back through my life at leisure, picking and choosing which pebbles to keep and which to throw.


I am especially lucky because I realize that a lot of this wasn't luck at all. It is interesting how two people can have the exact same experience and come to different conclusions. Much like two people, given a hundred dollars will buy different things. One lives, one dies. One loves the other is lost.


Sometimes I think I am like "Popeye", I just am what I am. The truth is most of my life was on purpose. I was the director of this play and this is where I have wanted to be. None of it came fast but with each step I knew where I was going. My house is big and sturdy and paid for and that has always been the central player in this theater. I have my own little island, house, garden, my shop, the greenhouse and the little garden pool. I am surrounded by flowers and tomatoes. I have never borrowed money against my house; it has never been in jeopardy, always there, this place I call home.

I can do anything I like, and spend much of my time without a plan of any sort. Some days I think I will write again and if no story appears I might weld in my shop, create from steel and stone that which I have always been. Other days I might play at painting. That too is fun because I know no rules and do what I want. Spring will be here soon enough and the Earth will call for my assistance. I will spend a lot of time in my garden and the greenhouse. I am picking up old habits and learning to read again, slowly, devouring pages, ingesting paragraphs, looking at the words.

I think back over my life and realize that roads not travelled I could not have gone on. They were not my roads; I would not have been me. The roads I did take and where I had to make my own have lead me to where I needed to be. Free, because I choose to define it that way.

3 comments:

  1. I think that perhaps you will be remembered as a fighter with a loving heart and the soul of an artist, who truly enjoys living. I adore that metal work in the picture! Sheer brilliance!

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  3. I think when people think of others they think of who they are and what they did through their lives. Anything else that happened along the way they will remember as something that person experienced not something they are or were. An illness is not who we are it's just one of many experiences in our lives.

    I'm sure you have much to be remembered for besides just one experience out of an entire lifetime.

    Wonderful writing by the way, and the gate(?)in the picture is absolutely beautiful.

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