Today is the last day of my chemo protocol. I've been letting my mind veer away from thinking about it too much. As though it's a ghostly, insubstantial thing that will vanish if you look at it straight on. I try to keep it in my peripheral vision.
I'm not ready for cake and joy yet. I haven't even gotten to full on relief. I honestly do not know what life will look like. I don't know how to be a cancer survivor, especially with the looming fact of high rates of recurrence and continuing biweekly lab checks. I think I will be holding my breath for the next two years. But I have a fair chance of getting to do that. And maybe getting to lie in a hammock with a good book in the garden, to dig my hands into the soil, and taste things at the farmers market, and have a glass of wine with the people who have helped me to survive through all this.
Thinking of gardens and good books, I visited Robin McKinley's blog. And it turns out that her friend and fellow author, Diana Wynne Jones, died today. And besides being a terrible loss for her friends and family, and a grief to all the readers who have loved her books, it was a biting reminder of the realities of life, and death, with cancer.
Part of me may always be waiting to fall off the next precipice. And I am baffled by the idea of living with that fear and also with the grief for all the folks who don't even get a chance to try.
