Translate

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Feeling is healing...

Two surgeries and then radiation for breast cancer left me with large areas of numbness on my left side, in my arm, armpit and shoulder - nerve damage from cutting and zapping. This is strange to live with, but not hugely disruptive until recently, when some of the feeling has started to come back. Sometimes it is almost painful, a waking up - what the cancer world calls "zingers"  -  like small electrical shocks dancing up and down my arm or shoulder. Sometimes it is almost a Charley-horse: a cramping, or spasm, like after you've mucked out a dozen stalls in a barn, or carried tons of book boxes in a move. Distracting, but not unwanted, and it serves as a reminder that I am healing, coming back to a new normal, to a new life. Feeling is healing.

This week, I realized the same was happening, being married again. When my late husband died young and very suddenly of a heart attack, it was like an amputation of love, a massive severing of nerves and feeling.  I did, eventually, for survival, go completely numb to the intricacies of intimacy with someone so beloved, someone with whom all the joys and pleasures of coupling seems endless, but clearly isn't. Luckily, I soon had a child and found rich fulfillment in the kind of love we can and do grow with our beautiful beings, these lovely incarnations who deserve the lavish outpourings of our hearts and minds. Not the same, but a gift.

Now I am married to my dear husband, my mate, the feeder of my heart and soul, and I feel the numbness quickly abating, the nerve endings knitting up and healing after so long. It isn't that I didn't begin by loving him, almost from the start, but now, living in a true marriage of two, I feel the tingles of deep intimacy, the joy and laughter, with the sensation of truly being known and cherished that comes in this kind of pairing. I once told a friend that I delight in marriage because it is like being in a private and exclusive club of just two members. I feel those zingers of intimacy, the tingles of deep love - the joy of being in that club of two. Feeling is healing.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Eat the peanut brittle...

My friend has a brain tumor. This happened: she worked incredibly hard, innovatively, teaching math in classrooms and online, mastering instructional design and technology, gathering data and perfecting what she did, until she could show that students can learn math online, often better than in the classroom. She chaired committees with intense organization and productivity. She took on a five year project with me that influenced the college's re-accreditation - you know, the ones that wake you up at 3am, heart pounding - and propped me up when we had little idea of how to go on, or tell unpopular truths in changing a culture.

She did all this for years and years, also supporting and caring for a disabled husband, a mother with Parkinson's, a daughter with mental illness challenges, and her own bad knees. In mid-December, at the end of the fall semester, she officially retired, seeking the rest and reward that is meant to bring. On December 16th, we gave her the small luncheon she requested instead of a large party, and gifted her with bags of art supplies; she is a math teacher who paints and draws beautifully. Last weekend, she was admitted to ICU with a large tumor, causing blood to accumulate on her brain.

Getting this news on Monday made me feel worse than I had felt all throughout my cancer adventure. I never once asked "why me?" but this has me screaming "why her?" I don't know what is going to happen next, as if I ever did, but something did happen.

My dear friend Liza sent us back from North Carolina with the Christmas gift of the most delicious homemade peanut brittle. I ate a few pieces when we got home and thought, whoa - that is just too good. I'm going to begin this new year with some restraint, some constraint (those "ain't" words...) and ration out that peanut brittle. Something that good needs to be controlled.

Monday, after hearing about my friend's hospitalization, I ate the peanut brittle. A few pieces; not all. But I gave myself permission to have that pleasure, a pleasure given by another friend. This is the only possible lesson - enjoy all the good you have, especially the good that is a loving gift, because the time comes when you can't, and you don't know when that time will be. This lesson so often needs retelling. Eat the peanut brittle.