I have known for over a week that I will be having a biopsy on my right breast today. I had a mammogram 10 days ago that revealed a mass, tiny, but problematic enough to call for a deeper look. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the procedure. What does it mean? What will it reveal? Between prayer and meditation, I drifted in and out of sleep, concern, annoyance and irritability.
How do I feel about this biopsy, about the possibility of having a second round of cancer in less than three years? Honestly, it is surreal. I just read in the Commercial Appeal that Robert Tayloe. a well-known Memphis realtor and pillar of the community, died last Friday after a long fought battle with cancer. F _ _ king cancer! I say that and then I think, why cancer? It is like an internal pack man-eating us alive. No rhyme or reason. You have cancer. There I said it. The possibility is always there waiting to erupt. If not today, later.
Perhaps I am closer to accepting death than I have ever been. Odd because for years I wanted to die even considered suicide. I was afraid to live, afraid of the friction of life, the waves of unseen energy and experience that erode and shape us like stones on a riverbed. But not so today. I love my life. In learning to love life, to embrace it fully, I have accepted death as a part of life. Death makes life ever more precious, beautiful, miraculous. Every cloud, every star, the smile on Amelia’s face, dinner with the neighbors, teaching yoga, going to see friends in Chicago, petting my lab who almost died from a gastric blockage….every event, every minute of every day is alive with possibility and wonder.
What if we envision death as an old friend who has come to spend our time with us, to share our last moments here on earth instead of as the grim reaper, who breaks into our homes and steals our most valuable possession, our life? Friend or foe, death will come. Perhaps it is in the way we greet her, what we say to our family when she comes, whether we have made peace with ourselves, perhaps our world view determines the quality of our death.
Guess that is how I feel about the biopsy I am having at 12:45 today. Curious. We shall see.
Writing into the Light 