November 1, 2021
What a glorious autumn day we had yesterday! The sun was brilliant and there was still color in the leaves, so despite needing to be home by 3:30, we hopped in the car and made the hour-long drive out to Larch Mountain. Oh, the view from the top: Mounts Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, Jefferson, and Hood, “our” mountain, ours probably because we can see it from lots of places in the city.
I love being out in the woods. I love the quiet, the sound of the wind high in the trees, the scent of evergreen. I love the chill even when I can feel it through my wind jacket and I’m on the verge of being cold. I love moving through the woods, feeling my muscles work with my breathing to propel me. I love that my DH (dear husband) and I have so many years of hiking together that we are comfortable in silence, that we know when the other would like to see something we’ve found, or we know when to pause to let the one lolly-gagging behind (usually me) to catch up.
I love being alive.
Even as I write this, I have tears in my eyes. As I said to Mark yesterday, it’s not that I worry about dying, it’s just that I don’t want to let go of living. So there was a small moment of weepiness in the woods, then we set off again. And there was also the commitment to do what I love, to the capacity of the parameters the cancer sets.
(I did not run up the paved pathway yesterday, for example, or bound up the stairs to the lookout point. I paused multiple times to let my heat rate catch up with the rest of me– damn those steroids– and had a chance to absorb where we were. Plus, there was the added bonus of a screaming two year-old who did not want to be in a pack on her father’s back, and just to show them who was boss, tossed her new sneakers off to the side of trail as she howled.)
Don’t worry. I know I don’t have to let go, not yet, and I hope not for a long time to come. And yet the reality of lung cancer is its relentlessness. I live with that awareness every day, and apparently, that awareness is so deep in my bones that every time there’s a bit of a medical event, it seeps out in some tears.
Acceptance has many layers. Grief, too. You don’t have to have cancer to know these two intimately. To know that you can keep moving even as you carry them, that they may be able to hollow you out a little more, but that you will be OK enough to get through your day.
Yesterday, even as I felt the crisp wind on my face as I walked, I was thankful for it. Because that’s how grief and acceptance work, too.
Here’s hoping you have a thankful moment today, and that your tears are few.
Thanks for reading.
Images
Mt. Hood image by Mark