You know how well intentioned people will say, “there’s always a silver lining’ or “in our darkest hour one door may close but

another will open”? And you just want to say, “Screw you”. Or at least that is what I’m sometimes thinking and feeling, but I say, “Yes, there are many silver linings”. And weirdly, this is also true. There are many silver linings in trauma. And it also totally sucks.

 

My husband’s cancer diagnosis came out of the blue. A routine colonoscopy changed our lives from one minute to the next.

It’s been quite a ride this past year. Chemo and radiation followed by surgery with many complications followed with more, stronger chemo and looking forward to more surgery in the spring. Anyone who’s done it knows this drill well. It’s exhausting, terrifying, traumatic, and numbing. And then there’s my intermittent and unexpected cortisol highs that bring on raging bouts of anxiety and dark frightening projections about the future., usually at 3:00 AM.

Yet all this angst also brings a whole lot of hope and positivity. That old saying that ‘you are more alive when you are close to death’, is really true, at least for me. Some days I am so filled with light-filled energy, that I must get outside and walk and walk and walk, up and down one rural road after another. I crave the sight of the hills, fields, and woods; the sweeping vistas from the top of Mc Cleary road are balm and nourishment both. I search for coyotes and hawks. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to see a bald eagle or Great Blue heron. I long for the sound of water over rocks and the roar of the wind in the 200 acre woods. Wind especially reminds me of power and grace and of my tiny place in this universe. A tiny place in a good way. I am not alone. I’m part and parcel of every moving atomic particle. It’s a comfort and exhilaration both.

Don’t get me wrong, I also feel sad, frustrated, and trapped in the get me out of here for a week at the beach kind of way. Then I must push hard to get out of bed and get outside. I make myself meditate because it definitely helps me, and I drink a couple of glasses of wine at the end of the day. That helps too. A little numbness is good in an unrelenting situation.

As for silver lings, there have been many these past seven years. I’ve learned I’m way, way stronger than I thought I was. I’m more confident, more tolerant, more patient. I appreciate more. I relish experiences with friends more. My relationships with family are closer and stronger. There’s a tenderness in my heart and perspective that wasn’t as apparent to me before. I pause more often and take stock. Perhaps this list is something that all caregivers and family members experience during a serious illness. I know I’ve read many of these on online caregiver testimonial sites. Even though they sound cliché, they are indeed true, at least for me.

What I learned from cancer is that life is short. It goes by so fast. At 30, when I was working as the only woman in a commercial real estate firm, Carter Dye, the 70 year old broker, took me aside and said, “I know you probably won’t believe me when I tell you that one day you will look back on this time in your life and wonder how it could have possibly gone by so fast, like a handful of sand sifted through your fingers in 30 seconds. That’s how it feels from 70. You just can’t believe you did all of that stuff in such a short time. It didn’t feel fast while you were doing it. But now it feels like it went by at warp speed. “ Of course I didn’t believe him at the time. I thought he was old and giving me ‘fatherly’ advice. But now, now I do.

The warp speed of life has made an impression on me particularly over this past year. I’m turning 65 in February, and incredibly, unimaginably, I can see the end. Something unfathomable for me even a year ago. That sense of leaving leaves me with a ‘seize the day’ mentality. I know time is short. I probably won’t be able to fit everything I want to do into the ten or twenty years I have left.

So I’ve reevaluated my bucket list, a list whose contents have always been haphazardly organized and prioritized. Now I ponder and mull over what I want to do, where I want

to live, and with whom I want to be. Time is of the essence and no longer a thing to traipse about in as if I had a boundless supply of it. It matters very much how I spend my days and nights. And that, that is exhilarating, and freeing. Instead of tightening around this ‘end’ idea, I’ve decided to try to loosen my hold and just go. Much the way I did so easily in my twenties. Now it’s not so easy, but I’m determined to go for it anyway. Time, time, time. It’s a big motivator.

Just as in my twenties, I want to live in the mountains. I want to work in a community of like-minded people who know that we create our lives and our environment. I want to live among people who love and honor nature. I want to live among rocks and water, snow and sun, wind and soaring mountaintops.

Amazingly, I found the New York Adirondack Mountains through my husband twenty years ago. Since then, we’ve spent all of our vacations and school breaks somewhere in the six million acre Adirondack Park. It’s the oldest and largest forest preserve in the United States, larger than the combined size of Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Parks.

Ten years ago we bought a small, tidy 100 year old farmhouse in the hamlet of Wadhams, close to Lake Champlain. It has been our refuge from the hubbub of big city life and work in Baltimore, MD. We go there to restore and create, to hike and paddle with friends who seem like people we’ve known forever. The Adirondacks is our home-spot. The place where we feel most ourselves.

So how do we get there? Can cancer be both our epiphany and tipping point? Can we ditch our secure jobs and lives here in Stewartstown, PA and go for it in a place we know and love, but have never lived a work-a-day life in? Do we pave our way by making a financial plan with our Morgan Stanley guy, Dave? Do we look for work there from here? Do we let that nagging fear that we’re ‘too old’ get in our way?

I’ve thought a lot about these things and have come to a few conclusions. We ain’t getting any younger. We ain’t going without a plan. We are going to be afraid, just like when you make your first dive into deep water. But should fear stop us? We’re challenging cancer at the moment. Moving can’t be any scarier than that, can it?

So when my husband says, “I don’t want to die in Stewartstown, I want to die in the Adirondack Mountains”, I enthusiastically agree. In the past, we laughed as we said this, believing it would happen later, rather than sooner. Now when we say it, there is a tolling immediacy that wasn’t there a year and a day ago. Cancer changes everything.