Making a choice

It seems as if the tests are never ending. I am hoping that this will be the last one and the doctors will be able to move on to the surgery on the esophagus. It's like a checklist -- the PET scan checks what looks good and what doesn't and then each part of the body that doesn't look right must again be tested and checked off before the next stage of the game. Frustration doesn't begin to describe how we feel. But, as Keith has been saying a lot lately, "oh well, there's not much we can do about it." Unfortunately, true.

It's been very tense recently. Except for fatigue, Keith seems to feel pretty well most of the time, but there is a cloud of anxiety that has blanketed all of our activities. Often that anxiety manifests itself as irritability and impatience. Fear is in the background (and sometimes in the foreground as well, such as with the liver cancer scare). It is a strange way to live -- on the edge of a cliff, swaying with the wind, always feeling you are about to fall.

Many have written that when a person knows that death is imminent life takes on an almost miraculous feel. There is a sharp awareness of each moment. But, there is another state of being that is less explored. The time spent waiting to get well, or waiting to be told there is no hope, is a state when moments are spent from doctor's appointment to doctor's appointment, from procedure to procedure. Precious moments spent in tiny spaces in hospitals filled with mysterious technology and busy people scurrying around while you lay on a bed with tubes in your arms wondering what is going to happen to you. Meanwhile the day outside is clear and bright and cool. A day better spent on a sailboat if all this doesn't work out the right way.

There were no Hannukah candles lit this year. Only a few Christmas decorations are up. No lights on the trees outside. Keith will likely be in the hospital and things just don't seem put together in the usual way. Gift-giving seems unimportant when the only gift any of us really want is our husband/dad/son healthy and strong.

Time is the gift God gives us. It seems so endless while we are young and so impossibly brief as we age. It is the reality of the present and also the memories of the past. Time is the possibilty of what is to come and those possibilities are infinite. Every choice, no matter how small, affects the next choice, the next moment in time, until the dominoes are falling in ways you could never have imagined. Some of those choices are amazingly wonderful, and others impossibly tragic. I have often marveled at the series of life events that brought Keith and I together. Shifts and changes that seemed to push and shove us into the same time and space so that we could then make choices together. Since then time has been pretty good to us. We have made choices to have "too many" children together and we are both so glad that we did. We changed jobs and sometimes careers that have placed us in locations where we met other people who have made a great difference in our lives. We have spent our time together productively (and sometimes wastefully), but the main thing is: we have spent our time together.

Time feels like an enemy. But that is only because we cannot see beyond the horizon of this life that we presently live. We have to accept the time that is given us and use it as best we can. Just writing these words has helped me to reaffirm my belief that time must be valued and that our place in the universe, as small as it is, may be more important that we realize. Each dominoe must be in place. As each individual choice affects another, so does each life affect another. From the beginning of time until the end of the universe, every moment and every life is connected. Keith's life touches many others. He has affected my life profoundly for the better for 28 years, and that is something remarkable indeed.

So today, while we go through yet another lengthy "procedure" I will keep these thoughts in mind and embrace the time we spend together -- the cool, clear day will be outside, but the warmth of human love will be inside the tiny room filled with machines and busy people.