December 1-2, 2014

Let's pretend I was making a list: Top Ten Things I Miss About Not Having An Incurable Disease. Let's pretend the furnace kicked on and Gus got off the couch and slunk over to the slider to look for a squirrel. Let's pretend I missed being at work with a room full of students on Monday, December 1. Let's pretend the Christmas tree glowed like a night full of stars in our front window. Let's pretend I sneezed and Julie blessed me from where she lay on the couch, trying to sleep away a virus.

Okay. Then I looked at the list and I realized, not at all to my surprise, that a good 7 of 10 things on it existed entirely in my head. Things like Hope for recovery and The Wonderful Illusion of Immortality and Not thinking of my life in terms of Before and After. My incurable disease doesn't care whether I have Hope, nor does it make one whit of difference to my incurable disease that I no longer believe in The Wonderful Illusion of Immortality, and I am pretty much certain that it makes no difference to my incurable disease if I think of my life in terms of Before and After. The beautiful paradox being of course that it is only through letting go of these things that I can embrace them.

In other words, this door to Hope: When I walked Gus yesterday, I told him, "Any day I can walk and talk is a good one." At that moment I had all the Hope I would ever need. And this door to Before and After: Am I teaching now? Even if this is After, I believe I am, and that it is as worthwhile in its way as it might have been Before in a room full of students on this Monday, December 1. As for The Wonderful Illusion of Immortality, well, it is to laugh. It surely was wonderful, but it was just as surely an illusion any man of my age had given up long ago.

I hope this makes sense to you on the other side of the screen because I really have been giving this some thought over the past week. What does it mean to have an incurable disease? Yes, it may mean having to repeat virtually everything I say, but does it really mean having to worry about what the word "progressive" means? Because while I get that it is indeed a royal pain in the ass not to be able to make myself understood, I just as readily concede that all the worrying in the world will not change the meaning of the word "progressive."

This is not just good news, in fact, it is the best news imaginable and the true blessing of the place in which I find myself: the ability to live more completely in the now than I ever imagined. If I'm not careful, I might embrace all over again The Wonderful Illusion of Immortality.