You Don't Know

“If you don’t have cancer, you don’t know cancer, you can’t know cancer.” Doug stopped typing and read the sentence to himself silently. So easy to type, so hard to explain. Frustrated he leaned back in his chair and stared out the window.

Autumn attacked the foliage in the yard outside the French doors of his study. Squirrels were frantically scavenging acorns, probing the reds and golds that littered the lawn for morsels to tide them over the coming winter. A breeze coaxed more leaves from the trees – their broad surfaces acted as parachutes as they drifted and pirouetted to join their siblings, already landed. Absent- mindedly he reached for his coffee as he watched. Taking a sip he realized it had gone tepid. He grimaced at the taste and sensation but swallowed anyway.

It had been months since he tried to write. His life had been overtaken with doctor appointments, biopsies and blood draws. He shuddered as he remembered the sensation of lying on the table as the machines robotically circled his body overhead and softly clicked pictures of his organs; lights flashed to tell him to hold his breath or to exhale; deciding if he was going to die.

Momentarily inspired he purposefully backspaced out the sentence. Back to the blank page. If only life were that easy- just back up and start over. He stared at the empty screen, the cursor blinked impatiently. He typed again.

“If you don’t face mortality, you don’t know mortality, you can’t know mortality.”

Doug scowled. An improvement, but still not right.

This version spoke to the weeks when he got up every day, drove to the cancer center, dressed in a hospital gown and laid there while yet another machine drilled lethal beams of radioactivity at him, or more precisely at his cancer. Each day he counted off the seconds the machine took to complete its two passes. Then like a prisoner in the deepest cell, he mentally ticked off another day, counting down until he finished the prescribed course. There was a bittersweet irony on the last day when the attendant kept his patient pass.

“You won’t need this anymore” she smiled. In the moment, he grinned back at her, hugged the valet attendant and whistled all the way home.

A movement in the yard brought him back to the present. A cat stalked through the leaves, paws lifted exaggeratedly. There must be a little dew on the leaves.

Doug got out of his chair, took his mug and went into the kitchen for a refill. When he lifted the pot, he realized it was almost empty. He stopped for a moment as the realization washed over him and the metaphor screamed to him.

All of his subconscious energy had gone into the battle; fending off the well-meaning “How are you doing?” questions, bristling at the “You look good” accusations, enduring the searching looks as his friends looked for signs that he was hiding something from them. The sigh of relief at the completion of treatments was also the air escaping from his life. He realized that his mood matched the season, and dark winter approached unless he did something to regain control. He put a fresh pot of coffee on to brew and the thought came to him. As a broad smile crossed his face, he strode back to his desk, sat down and quickly typed.

“If you don’t live, you don’t know life, you can’t know life.”

Inspired by a poem “If you’re not from the prairie” by David Bouchard

October 2014