Hospital Room Ruminations
I’ve got lot on my mind lately.
I’m not sure if it’s the chemo or the cancer or what, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Thinking about life and death and God and my former step-daughter and, well, everything in between. I censor myself a lot here lately because of who some of my readers might be, but, well, sometimes it just all wells up and comes gushing out in spite of my better judgement.
Death, I’ve discovered, is far easier than life. Dying a noble, honorable death with quiet dignity was something I rather thought might happen to me. I never thought that I’d live to be an old man, but rather die young and tragically, most likely from some bad choice I made. Hell, more than once I thought my ex-wife might have tried to kill me in my sleep. God knows, she threatened to do it enough times when we were married. But, it looks like I may just live to a ripe old age after all. And, that is proving far more challenging than one would think, that living with integrity and dignity for a long time. There are days when it seems harder the longer I live.
I worry about my spirituality and my relationship with God. After the second round of chemo, after my family had all gone home to Illinois, I was watching a movie called Kingdom of Heaven. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about the Crusdades and the loss of the city of Jerusalem to the Muslims. In fact, that’s what really got my attention, the sub-theme of the religious devotion of the Muslims. One of the characters commented on the fact that they pray to God five times a day. And, at that moment, I found myself envying that kind of devotion to God. I found myself wondering if it was better to die on one’s knees, crying out to heaven for a closer connection to God or to live a long life with a thin, tenuous connection to a God one has little confidence in at all. I still wonder. And, of course, I wonder which one I will end up with and when.
I feel lost and disconnected.
This entire process of dealing with cancer and chemotherapy and medical procedures has left me with a greater sense of how alone I am in the world, and yet how many friends I’m lucky to have. I do worry that I’ll die alone, without family to mourn me. That I’ll be an old man without anyone to care for me or worry about me when I’m old. Perhaps that’s why I always thought I’d die young. Maybe that was the plan, somewhere in the back of my mind, so that I could avoid all that unpleasantness of growing old and dying alone. The friends I’ve shared that with all assure me that I won’t be alone the rest of my life, but, well, I’m not quite as convinced as they seem to be. Truly, I’ve never been as big a believer in myself as the people around me. It is quite possibly my biggest curse. Even my therapist was impressed with the fact that I was, essentially, a self-made man. My family never got me a job or paid my way into a career. Mom and Dad got me through college, but, after that, I pretty well have done the rest on my own, making the most of some lucky breaks and applying myself where lucky breaks weren’t to be had. But, still, I doubt my own abilities to deal with life on life’s terms. And, in spite of that, I still manage to prevail over adversity.
Even today, sitting in this hospital room, I’m here against all odds, still alive and able to fret over the vagaries of fate.
I don’t know where this life of mine is going to take me, and that honestly frightens me a bit, or how I’m going to deal with the wreckage of my mistakes or the medical bills, but, I suppose, there’s time enough to figure that all out while I’m still kicking. And, from what the doctor has said this week, I’m still alive and kicking and will be for quite some time. So, stay tuned and we’ll find out what happens next, together, faithful readers. Your guess about what comes next is as good as mine.
