Life after cancer

Going to work at Justa Center in the morning, I park under a tree across the street from the entrance of a parking facility for state (of Arizona) employees. The facility has roll down gates in addition to the traffic barriers which prevent unauthorized access. The roll down gates are closed at night and on weekends to prevent access by foot.

Before last March and my enforced idleness due to my near-death experience, the gates rolled up at precisely 6:00 am. I marveled at the synchronization of time that this entailed. The gates, my cell phone and car radio all had the exact same time. After my return to work in October, I noticed that the gates were still closed after 6:00 am. I suspect that the time is now 6:30 am but haven’t validated this time yet.

After noting the change, I came to the realization that the world outside of me had continued without me. The world had made changes during the six months that I had been concerned with my own affairs. I also realized that I had changed. My body had changed from the stresses of chemo, radiation and pneumonia; my thinking had also changed from my experiences.

I view my life much differently than I did before the diagnosis. I am a human. As a human I have some good, some bad and much in between. Willie Nelson has a song, “There is nothing I can do about it now” that sums up my thoughts about my life. The closing stanza puts it eloquently:

“I’m forgiving everything that forgiveness will allow
And there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

I have also come to question the meaning of human life in general. That is something that never occurred to me before. When I come to a conclusion about it I will let you know.