Each time another problem has come down in the past two years I first get shocked. Then I move to action. While my logical brain calculates, rage, despair, fear and sadness fill the cracks of my breaking heart.
I am not particularly pleasant to be around unless I am putting on my bravado show. My bravado makes a sound that could be either laughing maniacally or chanted keening. My bravado dances to Tom Petty's "Refugee" and Bette Midler's "Beast of Burden."
Grace comes when the tears begin to fall.
I pull myself up. I line my eyes blue and wear orange and green.
I lift heavy weights and dig in the soil without wearing gloves.
I give thanks for every possible thing I can think of like having indoor plumbing and eyes that see.
Friends and Music save me from a bitterness that could destroy me if I don't remain vigilant.
Yeah, I sit here on this morning in late May. The huge oaks in our backyard are dappled with early morning light. I write as I listen to Dylan. I have had a huge crush on that man since I was fourteen. Believe it was "Rainy Day Women" that did it for me.
That song for my young uncertain mind conveyed an exciting mix of angst and danger.
Age. Our guy Dylan is now seventy-two. Only twenty years ago seventy-two conjured up pictures of recliners and pill bottles. Yet, he still rocks. May I too rock at seventy-two?
Aging is happening to the Forever Young set. Friends are dying. People we love including maybe our own selves are getting scary diagnoses. What once was a month is now a week.
And a day is a mere piss in the wind.
Unsettling for sure. I stay busy as if in doing so I can keep the Grim Reaper from laughing too hard.
Got another cancer scare this week. I chose not to talk about it. No amount of talking does a damned bit of good. Diagnosed with breast cancer last March did not scare me at the time. I was too busy staying in action researching , and then jumping through the hoops of surgery and radiation.
It was only about six months later that I admitted to myself that I was scared shitless. Not so much about dying, but scared about dying feeling that I have not totally lived.
And that is the $64,000 question. How do I know the answer to that? Perhaps I think too much- always been accused of that. It is, however, my nature to ponder. Been that way since I was a little girl.
My aunt once said it was my "artistic temperament" whatever that means. A doc said it was OCD. Well, whatever the fuck it is, it is who I am. And inherent in those very qualities are my gifts- double-edged though they may be.
I think of two friends who passed away this year. My darling girlfriend died in February. Our dear buddy with the dancing eyes died on Wednesday. Too young to die? Fifty-nine and sixty-eight respectively.
See, we think that is young, but it is not. As my deceased friend Sue wrote to me in an email a few years ago:
"This is it Paula and I am making great efforts to accept my life as a miracle...what is the
alternative? "
Yesterday was the day that I knew my biopsy results might be available. I was so scared that I felt slippery in my gut. While doing kitchen chores, "Jackson" played on my iPod dock, and before I knew it I was dancing and singing to both June and Johnny's parts.
Next, I dialed up Patti Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" and I danced hard. As I did my inner self burst out and smothered my fear.
Dancing Paula was vital, sensuous, sexy and young because that is what is in her soul - the part she finds it easy to forget too often these days.
I made the call to Moffitt. I went about my business with a steady hand as I awaited a call back from pathology.
Turns out results are benign.
Things fall apart. They fall together again. They fall apart again. They.....
