Vulnerability

I feel vulnerable today, as surely as I feel the gray clouds wrapping cool humidity around me on this overcast day. Cancer found me a decade and a half ago, snuck up on me when I did not expect it. According to conventional wisdom, I had already been doing what I could to prevent it with exercise, a healthy diet, and a good job. My own cells turned on me it seemed, and there was nothing I could do – except decide to live the best life I could for however long I had.

Nicholai's diagnosis held a similar sense of powerlessness for me. I'd made him good food and kept our immediate environment free of toxins as much as possible; still mutating cells began to invade his body. Now my sister's breast cancer diagnosis reminds me that we are all potentially vulnerable to cancer, and finally, of course, to death. Not protected by our culture's habitual denial – "it'll never happen to me," I know that it can happen to me and mine and I must find ways to make my peace.

There is a funny silver lining to a cancer diagnosis, and that is the stripping away of denial. My beloved Nicholai only has so long with me – not the forever I would wish for; there is an expiration date to our lives, however soon or however far away.

Having cancer changed me forever. No longer was I able to put off following my heart till some later time when I was more successful, had a fat savings and retirement fund, was thinner or more popular, or met some new benchmark in my ever shifting pursuit of perfection. Fifteen years ago, I started my daily habit of walking with the dogs, which to this day grounds me no matter how life storms around me – and it certainly storms. When my adopted children seemed to need my full time attention, I sold my office and took time to be a full-time parent. When it became apparent that I needed to write, I signed up for writing workshops and classes and followed what seemed an impractical passion, but which today is one of my sources of joy and fulfillment.

And those walks - in spite of time constraints, gas prices, a hectic schedule, or bad weather, I find my way to the rivers, fields, and trails on the edges of the city for quality walking time in nature – no excuses.

My heart aches for the days I won't have Nicholai with me. My brave protector and constant friend, I will miss him so much when he has to go. But the certain knowledge that he will go, raw and uncoated by cultural denial, gives me the push and the permission to take time with him today. The certain knowledge that I will go helps me when guilt (recovering Catholic) and obligation threaten to take over my daily agenda.

That's when I remember no day is guaranteed except today. So I accept my fear, I honor my feelings of vulnerability and the worry that my cells may betray me once again. Cancer cells, gray skies, pounding hail or no, the day calls me to go with Nicholai on our wonderful walk.

This is the day there is, I will rejoice and be glad in it.