Please, Not Yet
Mutterings And Murmurs
“It’s the cancer that’s straightened me out. It spooked me so bad I got over being scared.”
“Kind of hair of the dog.”
“Maybe. When they first told me I had it, I was so frightened I used to feel like at night I was being smothered. I would feel death like it was lying down on top of me. It was all this heavy blackness and emptiness. I used to wake up with this grinding inside me, like my insides were slowly being rubbed to dust against a stone.”
“What changed?”
Robert snapped a match, stuck it to the burner. The burner made a soft whump and a short line of blue flame ran along the lower edge. “I don’t know, he said. “Angels come, I guess.”
- Jack and Robert from ‘Cheap Ticket To Heaven’ by Charlie Smith
I am still over being scared.
Never was really.
It’s 7:38 am
I’m out of bed.
My radiology appointment is at 2:15 pm
It’s another CT scan prep for more radiation therapy.
It’ll be my ninth last time ringing ‘The Bell of Hope’.
The word ‘mortality’ came up for the first time.
Big word.
I’m at the sink.
Unsticking blood crusted lips.
I blow and drip and spit stringy, red speckled phlegm bubbles.
I rinse.
The cat yowls for breakfast.
I feed him.
I make coffee.
Slippers and work vest are on.
The computers are on.
The cats on the keyboard now.
I take a second sip of coffee.
All at once I feel very, very tired.
Woozy, swimmy and faint.
I stand and falter and stumble backwards into a wall and against a guitar.
It self strums an awkward, unamplified note.
An A/Z major I think.
The cat jumps.
I bang my head and see the stars I couldn’t see the night before.
I’m losing control like Ian Curtis.
She’s lost control.
Me too.
I’m going out.
I think, “Please no, not yet!”
Who do I think this to?
Somehow I recover enough of myself to get up off the floor, for some reason picking up my coffee mug. I stagger to the bathroom as the urge to move my bowels takes over. I stumble four steps and fall again in the hallway, somehow managing to put my coffee cup on the ledge without spilling a drop…before I go down. I bang my head on a wall again, seeing a meteor shower this time. With my left cheek on the carpet, I think, “Is this what it’s like?”, “Is this the end of it?” I think again, “Please no, not yet” and then hear my self whispering it out loud. “Please no, not yet! It didn’t occur to me to actually direct the plea to anyone. I was concerned with not losing consciousness and determined to make it to the toilet to avoid the embarrassing inevitable in case the ‘yet’ takes me and I don’t make it to the toilet or live to make my appointment.
Somehow I push myself up off the floor to shudder my way to the toilet, hitting the door jambs, thinking success, relief, ignoring the embarrassing reality of not quite making it. I am relieved but shaky and as I come to a bit, I realize that I have partially soiled myself and the area around me. I think, “God, what a mess how…will I ever clean this?” “I must!” I think a few more thoughts, wondering if I should try to call 911 but realize that entering the broken health care system in a compromised state might very well be the end of me. I do not trust the free but broken symptom management system anymore. I did once. I do not want to be unconscious in a broken system I do not trust. I remain seated and try to think things through for a bit. I test to see if I have recovered enough to get myself sorted. I stand, shaking carefully, watching the cat patiently watching me.
What is he waiting for?
I eventually stand and carefully undress. I fold my nightclothes to avoid any further mess and slowly and methodically start to clean up my filth. When done, I run the shower and clean my body and then rinse off my nightclothes and hang them in the shower. By then my head is pounding and I’m really tired so I take two Motrin 400s, get dressed in clean nightclothes and crawl back into bed.
I’m cold.
I shiver.
I cover up.
I set the alarm.
In my head, I hear Mogwai’s ‘Fear Satan’ playing in the background.
The piece that evokes faith in life and power.
Play it now or later.
The one with Cat Meyer drumming at the Quay Sessions.
Or the other one.
Before drifting off I think of my plea “Please no, not yet.” Should I have directed this to a God who I wasn’t totally believing in? Would this have been as disingenuous as saying the Lord’s prayer at an AA meeting? Prayer can be an act of humility, acceptance and healing even without the full acceptance of a higher power.
I meditate.
I recite a prayer that may or may not have appeared in some AA literature, from a time when I prayed a lot, without knowing who I was praying to.
Change me God.
Please change me now or soon.
Though I cringe, kick, resist and resent.
Pay no attention to me whatsoever.
When I run to hide.
Drag me out of my safe shelter.
Change me totally or even partially.
Whatever it takes or however long it takes.
Change me and save me from spiritual and physical self destruction.
I sleep.
The alarm sounds at 11:30 am.
Somewhere before that alarm were sleeping thoughts and visions, covering the historic zoom from my birth to perceived near death. They are scattered pieces. One piece puts me on a road, on my V-Strom, far from home, feeling a familiar feeling that I sometimes feel as I enter a curve of an otherwise perfect road. There was what I perceived to be the last uneasy feeling as I rounded the last curve of my last epic motorcycle adventure, the vast expanse of a deep valley and deep blue sky off to the right and below me.
Something didn’t feel right. There was a slight but thrilling vibration from the front wheel that travelled up through the forks to my hands, arms, shoulders, back and spine and sit bones that brought the old familiar thought posed as a question.
“Do I have this?”
“Have I ever?”
As I’m asking, the vibration turns into a slight wobble. I’m 5,328 kilometers into a trip, resignedly tired but satisfied and motivated to finish this maybe last journey. I’m feeling good but a bit troubled that, at this late stage in my life, I have not found the ultimate, the prize, the exhilaration of knowing the meaning of everything, the reasons why my life and place on this earth ended up at this precise series of moments, under this bright blue sky, on a perfectly engineered curve of a perfect road, to the left of an impossibly wide and breathtakingly beautiful and deep valley, travelling at precisely 110 kilometers per hour, the engine humming sweet and low and strong at 3500 revolutions per minute.
I think of my daughters.
Are they going to be okay?
Are the good people of this world going to be okay?
Will the bad people stop being bad?
The wobble pulls me to the right. I am torn between the exhilaration, the beauty, the anticipation and the excitement and the emergency lights and klaxons that are flashing and blasting in my head. It doesn’t occur to me to slow down or stop. I am getting close to something big, for sure the shoulder, of the road, of this perfectly engineered road that has no guard rail – no safety net. I rocket off the edge. The rear wheel loses traction and load, the revolutions per minute jumping to 10,000 or so. The engine’s hum becomes a high pitched, harmonically perfect scream, like an amplified guitar smashing into a wall. There is beauty in sight and sound everywhere.
Beautiful!
And then it comes.
The 11th harmonic.
That Mogwai classic.
Before gravity takes over.
Before Wiley Coyote looks back and gives that look that used to make me laugh.
Before B-52 pilot Major ‘King’ Kong frees the nuke that’s stuck in the bomb bay and rides it, over the drop zone, the sweet spot, to ground zero in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
Here it is.
The meaning of absolutely everything.
Resolution.
Absolution.
Redemption.
Assured destruction.
I am still unafraid.
Joy.
Bliss.
Angels come.
I love you.
Good-bye.
Now please!
The end.
