Post Number Forty-One

A PARTRIDGE IN THE SNOW

Copper loves the snow, especially the cold, light powder that has been falling of late at our cottage on Lake Louise.  On a walk along the trail, in the still frigid afternoon, she plows with canine excitement pushing the snow to the side with her chest and bounding up the hill beside the trail.  From time to time she stops and sticks her head completely beneath a drift.  Then she comes up for air and runs full speed back to our side hoping for a treat of praise.  She is pure joy.  She is the moment. She is without fear for tomorrow and without regret for yesterday.

I have come to be with Terry at our beloved home.  Together we contemplate the results of the latest disappointing scan.  More lesions have been found.  Hope and courage have been damaged. She and I are both beginning to think of possibilities we once thought distant.  Neither she nor I speak of the dread that has begun to grow within our hearts.  For the moment Terry feels well. Her work at the camp is well received and appreciated.  There is nothing to do but keep the appointment for the next chemotherapy treatment.  In the meantime we try to find ways to be gentle with one another and appreciative of one another.  

The winter woods are soft with snow.  We welcome the cold.  There is a knowing silence between us and within the forest.  Copper runs up the hillside to our left and goes on point.  Her eyes fix on the white.  A partridge explodes from hiding leaving a contrail of snowy powder as she maneuvers between the trees.  A partridge, or perhaps an explosion of the Holy Spirit into the desolation of the moment.  Who is to say?

Post Number Forty

The Lingering Unwelcome Guest

Mary Ryckman died on New Year's day.  No one saw it coming.  She was newly retired.  She was full of energy as she directed her considerable talents to new and important endeavors.  She had just finished hosting her famous New Year's Eve party.  Two hours later she was gone.  Why is it that as we get older the reminders of mortality seem to come more and more frequently?

Terry called for the results of her most recent blood test.  Once again this was to be a routine report.  Once again it was not.  Her CEA levels are elevated.  The last time this indicated another tumor lingering somewhere undetected.  A scan is scheduled for January 17.  Another round of chemotherapy begins on Thursday.  In the meantime she feels well and she is back at work drumming up business for the Lake Louise Christian Community.

I am beginning to learn that life is lived with the lingering presence of an unwelcome guest.  That guest is the ever-present possibility of illness and death.  This is not a guest given to eviction.  It is a guest that demands accommodation.  By that I mean it is a guest that we must learn to live around.  It is a guest that will, if we let it, consume all of our attention. It is also a guest that will finally have its way with us, but it need not have its way today.

I am learning that the best attitude toward this unwelcome guest is benign neglect.  I am learning that we must live as fully as is possible in the present moment without regard to the schedule of this unwelcome guest.  It is faith that allows this living - faith defined as a radical trust in God. 

1. Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
   Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heav’n and home,
   When Jesus is my portion? My constant Friend is He:
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
   • Refrain:
     I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
     For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
2. “Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
   And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
   Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
3. Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
   When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
   I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Post Number Thirty-Nine

Past Due

Terry is way ahead of me on this.  She has been after me to begin going through the piles of accumulated stuff.  She wants me to shed unneeded documents, books, and accumulated AC chargers that no longer have a device to charge.  She has been at this task for over a year.  We can now see the floor of our basement because of Terry's efforts.  Today I joined her.  I have worked all day to shed the detritus in my home office.  I have looked at every item and every paper stashed away on shelves, in boxes, and even in a pile on the floor that has rested undisturbed for four weeks.  I now have three, 39 gallon, lawn and leaf bags filled with stuff.  I can actually walk into the room and approach my computer without turning sideways or stepping over boxes.

Such a task often presents unexpected consequences.  At one point in this process I uncovered a VISA bill that had gone buried in the trash and was now past due.  In the midst of all the sorting and throwing out I had to stop immediately and pay this over due bill.  I fired up the computer.  I called up the secure web page and I made an electronic payment.  There.  Now back to work.

Or so I thought.  As I made my way through paper after paper and notebook after notebook I found other items that required my response.  Items that like that VISA bill were long past due.  I found Father's Day gifts from Carl and from Mary.  These were thoughtful, creative and touching gifts from our children that received a polite thank you at the moment of their giving and then disappeared into the clutter of my doing. One was a pocket certificate of appreciation from Carl and Anna.  Another was a spiral book of poems and pictures from Mary entitled A Collection of Life Poems and Other Such for My Daddy.  Expressions of love? Certainly, but more.  These long buried gifts were also status reports revealing the kind of adults our children had become. These were love filled offerings that I had lost in the clutter of unneeded busyness.

Memo to Carl and Mary and to Anna and Andrew:  Please forgive me for allowing the unneeded clutter of my life to delay my expression of love and appreciation for all of you.  Nothing in life is more precious than your love, your support, and knowing that you are taking the love you have received from Terry and me out into the world.  The present difficulty of Terry's illness is made bearable because I know that you are OK and making a contribution of love to this world.  Keep singing.  Keep writing. Learn to heal.  I will strive to never again allow the clutter of my life to bury my love and appreciation for all of you.

Dave Gladstone, Dad, Dadoo

Post Number Thirty-Eight

REPEAT

Here we go again.  We thought we were going in for a routine CT scan following Terry's October surgery.  We expected a clean report.  After all, the pathology reports following surgery showed no cancer in the surrounding liver tissue.  At first it seemed like that was the way it was going to go.  A resident came in and with great authority announced that he had looked at the scan and everything looked clean.  He put the image up on the screen and he began to scroll through the CT scan layers.  I do not know how to read those things, but I saw a shadow emerge on the screen and then disappear.  The resident said it was just scar tissue. "No need to worry." he proclaimed.  

We waited.  The surgeon, Dr. Yoshida, came in.  He was different. He knew.  "There is a suspicious shadow." he announced.  It was not there at the time of surgery, but there it is now.  He said he would set Terry up for a biopsy and then a radio-wave ablation. Not surgery this time, but back into the system.  

Terry has a phrase for such moments of bad news.  "It is what it is." she will say.  I cannot explain the strange comfort I experience in that phrase, but it is there.  It gives me permission to refuse the pointless emotional battle of trying to make something be different then it is.  It allows me a chance to focus my energy on the reality that is before us.  It is taking the enormity of that reality a long time to make itself known to us.

This is our second cancer Christmas.  I had thought that by now this battle would be won and be relegated to the level of heroic stories of battles fought and won - stories to tell with gathered family after a shared Christmas feast.  But the battle continues.  The outcome is still unknown.  It is what it is.

Dave Gladstone

Post Number Thirty-Seven

BUMPED

Terry's surgery was successfully completed last Monday and now she is into the demanding time of recovery.  The surgery was originally scheduled for the previous Wednesday but we got bumped.  We arrived at the hospital on Tuesday evening and took up residence in the hospital's guest housing.  We spent a mostly sleepless night and awoke early to be in pre-op on time.  We were ushered into pre-op, but we were told to wait.  After an anxious forty minutes we were told by a resident that the surgery had been canceled for that day and that we were to go home and wait for the surgeon to call on Thursday.

This was a blow.  We had worked hard to make the arrangements necessary in our lives to allow for the surgery. We had Terry's parents to worry about and the need to move them to a new care location.  It seemed to us that the doctor did not appreciate the difficulties we faced and the complications in our lives.  This delay seemed in the moment to be an unreasonable complication.

Now we know that Terry's surgery was canceled and rescheduled because a liver became available for someone else and our surgeon was tied up in an emergency transplant surgery that lasted more than fifteen hours. Terry was bumped in order that someone else could live. 

Once we understood the reason for the delay we actually were elated that our frustration meant life for someone else.  We began to understand that we live in connection with the needs of others.  Our wait seemed like a small price to pay for life.  This reminder came as a word from God reminding us that we do not live in isolation.  It is not always possible to get what we want just when we want it.  Another person's needs may be greater than ours at the moment.  This reminder is strangely comforting.

We are living in a time of great selfishness.  Politicians are running on nothing more substantial than the level of their anger.   People claim that they should have complete freedom and no restrictions in life. They claim that they are a "sovereign individual"  with no obligation to others.  I am grateful for the reminder that we live in connection to one another.

Dave Gladstone