Love

Constant Reader, I wrote this on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I was between bouts of delirium, and I had a message I desperately wanted to share.

I had forgotten about it. I found it last night. I needed this reminder.

Despite my fears and anxieties, it resonates. And I'm glad I did not post it around Thanksgiving. It would have been lost in the good tidings of that day. 

It's appropriate today.

And every day.

Constant Reader, I have not abandoned you.

Chemo is harder than I thought.

Living with chemo is harder than I knew.

There have been adventures great and small, comic and tragic. But that will wait. Those tales will be told...in time.


I so desired for this to be posted yesterday—Thanksgiving.
Alas, t'was not to be.


I wish for all of you that you had a Thanksgiving that celebrated love and life.
If not, there's still time...


Cancer treatment is brutal.

You're broken, debased, inhuman.

You are no longer human.


I'm eyebrows-deep. Barely surfacing. I'm in it. Breathing is hard. So is everything else.
Yet, I find myself in a beautiful place.


My spirit, my soul, my joy, my love has never been bigger, or more real.

I've never been in a more happy place.
Despite the sickness.

0300. Georgetown University Hospital. Bles Building, Room 2011, Bathroom.

I made it. Got here. Sit. Handy-dandy, hand-held urinal (gotta mesaure my pee). Relax. Flow. Finish. Gods, that smells like hell. Chemo-pee. Wipe. Slide-shuffle pants up and on...just...there.

Stand.

Nope.

Not happening.

Brain signals legs: "stand."

Legs wobble, a little...a lot

They're done.

The walls move; the room closes.

Pressure...my head...pressure...swirl...PAIN.

Focus, focus Ray.

The floor is liquid...won't stop moving...

My iris closes...

Pull call rope.

I need help.

HELP.

Love.

We are surrounded by love.

Yet we don't pay attention.

We talk of love, sisterly and brotherly, of parent and child. But we miss more than we capture with our labels.

We need to be Eskimos. We need more words for "love".

So many kinds of love.

So wonderfully expressed.

Look around you.

Look at what people do for you.

Look at what you do for them.

See their eyes. Watch!

My gods, we are surrounded by love!

And we see it so seldom. We recognize it so little.

We can change that.
You can change that.
Right now.

The toxins build. They're poisoning me!

I let them.

My body's no longer a thing I know.

It hurts. It's sick.

I manage. I'm here.

I look out. Stark, raving beauty greets me.

It's not a naughty nurse.

It's the world around me.

I'm grounded. Rooted. Solid.

Yet I'm elevated with the effervescence of love.

It sounds so woo-woo..."the effervescence of love."

It sounds so weird.

But it's true.

Embracing love from all the connections we share...opening my heart...it's made me bigger, better.

I'm in am amazing, rare, astonishing, mind-opening, revelatory, and joyous place. My gods, what gifts I'm given!

I am surrounded by joy.

And no one else sees it.

We can change that.
You can change that.
Right now.


Love.

It's beautiful.

Embrace the beauty.

Welcome the warmth.

Celebrate life and love.
Be well.


What will be will be what will be.
I've got this.