Today it is my four year Metaverssary.
There are so many things running through my head about my life now. If I was to compare I don’t know where I would start. So many things have changed for me. Not all are bad, and some of the things, such gifts, that I really needed to experience. Things I would have never have had a chance to do, unless I had something like metastatic breast cancer had occurred.
I was told on 3 May four years ago that it was all over. These were the words the doctor actually used. She said I had metastatic breast cancer all through my body and there’s nothing that can be done. A few nurses at Ballarat Base hospital reiterated her words, saying “Sorry” to me. I lived my life like the next few months, or, if lucky, the next few years, would be my last.
I don’t think there is anything else that would have jolted me into living life like this. Then, I lost Matt, (on Saturday it will be 3 years) and then the Holiday into the heart of the fired, and then Covid. And now a mad man is creating horrible atrocities for innocent people across the seas.
But despite all this, or perhaps because of it, I have had a chance at pulling back. At finding that I love making art. I have the love of a very special little dog. (I got to see her to her 2nd birthday and hopefully many more)
But the biggest thing? I have been given the gift of finding that I’m not such bad company. That perhaps I don’t need another person to fill me up and make me feel whole.
Don’t get me wrong. Metastatic (Stage 4) Cancer took things from me. For sure.
It took away some contact with amazing people (all my beautiful clients, whom I miss terribly).It took away the energy I used to have, to spend time with many of my friends.
It took away my physical strength and stamina.
But I have had time to ponder on life and get to greet each day like it may be close to my last. (That wonderful Buddhist teaching).
In January, I lost a dear friend to a more aggressive form of MBC. She called me in March last year to tell me her cancer had metastasised. And now, not even 1 year later, she is gone.
I often ask why I am still here. But I very rarely feel unlucky.
I want to share this poem by Derek Walcott
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
🙌 So, wow, don't some doctors take the cake! I'm so glad you can thumb your nose at the doc! I love what you wrote, and I love the poem too. I wonder if you might have a buddhist-leaning book you recommend? It has been a lot for you with a loss, the fires, and then covid but you have ridden the wave exceptionally well and here you are enjoying your life! Hugs to you, and if I get to visit Melb this year we should get together!
Cancer Personality?
Recent Metastasic Stage IV Breast Cancer
