Had I not finished chemotherapy on election day, I would have been due for another round this week. This possibility felt so present that Sunday I felt nauseous just looking at the crackers I would normally eat to settle to my stomach during the infusion, yet at the same time, I could not imagine doing it ever again.
With each round of chemo I have grown more fatigued, never quite recovering to the energy level I had before the last infusion. So when this week rolled around I struggled to imagine making the drive down to UCSF, voluntarily climbing in the chair and extending my arm for the next I.V. Or opening another pack of Neupogen syringes and injecting them into my belly knowing that 12 hours later, my bones would split with pain as the medicine worked to boost my immune system. I kept thinking, how could I be doing another round this week? But if I had to, I would have and right now I would be hobbling around the house, likely tearful, trying to make the hours pass and at the end of each day, I would be grateful for just that, the end of the day.
Remembering those days and nights acutely, David and I tried to celebrate the "not chemo" this week.
Whenever we could remember, one of us would ask the other, "what are we doing now?"
"Not chemo!" the other would reply.
Yesterday a beloved doctor of mine put things further into perspective, "Well you could have died. That could have happened with chemo. Check that off your list."
Last night, I started thinking of all the things that don't happen each day. All of the less obvious "not chemos."
Here is a start:
*car accident
*Luna escaping
*earthquake
*financial ruin
*crapping my pants
*complete amnesia
With my body slowed and mind jumbled by chemo, I now look for contentment in all the things that did not happen, rather than the things that did.
I learned about El Dia de los Muertos in high school Spanish class but did not actually experience it until living in New Mexico in 2008. A parade assembled as it had for decades and wound through a gauntlet of cheering spectators in the South Valley of Albuquerque. Cars transformed into mobile altars and floats transported dancing men and women dressed as skeletons in 19th century formal wear. White and black were used to demarcate bone from empty space but everything else was ablaze in color. The marigolds, dahlias, Mexican puppetry, music, dancing and altars honoring loved ones who have died were booming with life. That Day of the Dead, I felt like a spectative sponge, taking everything in.
The parade ended at a cement block community center housing local family altars with offerings of sweet breads, sugar skulls, flowers, fruit and often the family member's favorite meal. Outside, strands of bright white bulbs connected vendor booths and illuminated families eating tamales and perusing artwork for sale below. Skull-masked grandmas pushing skeleton pajamaed babies in strollers covered in a rainbow of handmade tissue paper flowers. Dogs wearing marigold wreathes. I went home thinking that Latin American cultures do a better job than most of joyfully commemorating their departed and bringing death out in the open.
This year I saw an ad in the newspaper advertising a Day of the Dead parade in Petaluma, a town 17 miles south of Santa Rosa. I recruited David and Ellen, not knowing what to expect. This is not New Mexico. We arrived at the purported starting place, the bridge joining the Petaluma Riverwalk to find only a handful of other white people in street clothes like us. I was already disappointed. Then the skeletons filed in, joining beach ball sized paper mache faces on sticks, and two costumed dance troupes. Toddlers, grandparents and many teenagers inbetween comprised Grupo Coyolxauqui, masked and adorned with three-foot-feather headdresses, shells jangling at each ankle creating a rhythm even before the first drum strike. The crowd grew as twilight fell. A skeleton dressed as Pancho Villa distributed candles amongst all comers, helping people light them one by one. Competing music from different ends of the mob rumbled and suddenly we were in motion along the riverwalk. It was then that I realized we, everyone, was in the parade.
Soon we found ourselves in near darkness, the only light from hand held candles and a few widely spaced street lamps. As we turned right onto the edge of Washington Boulevard, the procession necessarily narrowed to accommodate traffic and David, Ellen and I found ourselves on the heels of Grupo Coyolxanqui, dancers still spinning in unison already thirty minutes into the parade. Wafts of tamales and pupusas from the vendors at the community arts center ahead soon overtook the cedar incense emanating from the procession. After mingling with death, dance and drums I found myself very much alive, and ravenous.
The town of Petaluma built a community altar within the arts center where the parade ended but clearly the party had just begun. The mulitiered altar had a chair on top. After wolfing down a pupusa we doubled back along the parade route to downtown. We couldn't find our car. We couldn't remember where we had parked our car. I knew David and Ellen would pull it together and locate it. Instead I followed behind them thinking about the chair. The chair was for the departed. A place to rest during a visit back with the living.
As winter nears, wimpy as it may be in California, I thought about what I wanted to let go of and what I wanted to invite back. The list in both columns is quite long but one has tugged on me since the Day of the Dead. I let go of many things during seven years of medical training, as is done by necessity. Some were small and became routine: sleep, sitting down to eat, peeing when I needed to pee. Some where big and painful: baby and wedding showers, birthdays, weddings, funerals, reunions. Events commemorated on altars. During medical training I missed many more than I attended. And even for those that I successfully pulled a massive schedule swap and incurred federal government level favor-debt to attend, I often could only give my physical presence. That ate at me because that is not who I am. So now, I am inviting back events to sit in a chair and fully celebrate their significance, even if just for myself, as some are long departed.
Days before
I walk the yard
looking
for crisp edges
brown spots
yellow wilt
I pick leaves
one at a time
rub them between my thumb
and fingers
see what they can feel,
rough then nothing
I pluck faster
as a goat
finishing the rose bushes
stuck with thorns
to cherry tree branches
my scars stretch
Afterwards,
the sap in me
that makes the leaves curl
weak yellow brown,
from where I lie
the window only shows green
