A Safe and Healing Place

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIq09wGwKk&feature=youtu.be
This video was put together by Isaac and was a grand effort to give a visual of how our house came to be and all the memories that we had along the way. Isaac gave it to us for Christmas one year. Thanks  Isaac. You captured the spirit of this place well.                                                                       


 Looking back on it now it was quite an endeavor, this building of the house. I can appreciate what folks do when they undertake a long term project. This was long term and we were committed to doing as much of the construction ourselves as we possibly could. It took 10 years of weekends, evenings and whatever time we could find to get it to where we could move in. Our sons, especially Joshua our carpenter, helped, as well as in-laws and brothers and grandchildren and neighbors and people who worked for us. It really was a combined  effort. It's modest in size, only 1200 sq. ft., and looks somewhat like a chalet. It has many a personal touch added in. My reason for sharing this is to make a huge point. This has been a healing place for us and a safe haven through these turbulent days. We took care of Josh on different occasions here and he and I sat on the couch together while Lynne gave herself up caring for him and I. While we said good-bye to Josh, he is still very present with us, with all the memories in the building, his touch here and there and everywhere. It is as though this  has been prepared for us for this time, a place of green pastures and still waters, a safe passage through stormy waters.

Psalm 23

New International Version (NIV)

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

¹ The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
²     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
³     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
⁴ Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,^[a]
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

Anything will help

Up ahead I turn left, and there he would stand
On the esplanade with cardboard sign in hand
And most every time when the light was red
I'd get some money for his sign had said,
"Anything at all will help.".

With his cane in hand and grasping his sign,
He'd come to the window and just in time,
And speak his thanks for the bit I had shared,
For the light had changed and no feelings were bared,
Least of all anything that might help.

I go by that light about 3 times a week,
So my eyes scan over to take a peek.
I reach for my wallet for there he stands,
his cane and his sign grasped in his hands,
Looking to any for anything helps.

Sometimes we chatted and he talked of his life.
No kids and no work and he had no wife .
He  cared for his mother at age eighty four,
In exchange for a room, a roof, and a door,
So anything would help.

The last times I drove by there including today,
He hasn't been standing at his appointed stay.
And my mind goes to wondering if he is alright,
Has he found another corner a more lucrative site,
Because anything does help.

The corner stands empty, none take his place.
It's like most corners, cars, lights and space.
There's an empty spot now that he had once filled.
Strangely enough, it was I that felt chilled.
For anything he was to me really does help.

Cancer Survivor

 

April 18, 2013

concerns

From the web comic xkcd, this kind of honesty can only come from someone who intimately knows cancer.

Point Of Reference

We were talking in the Stem Cell Clinic waiting room. Suddenly I realized I can not imagine my life ever again without cancer. I also realized how it has begun to shape my life morphing so to speak into the new life. I have no idea when that happened. Well I guess I do. It was when I busted my back and also found out I had cancer. Everything changed then. But I still had this notion of denial , that everything would go back to the way things had been. What I suddenly felt in that waiting room that day was this: I, along with all the other patients in this room have CANCER and will have CANCER in some form or another for the rest of our lives.

The above was the beginning of a post that I had worked on in October of last year. I guess I have become accustomed to this new modality. So my condition is that I don't have cancer, that's correct, that's straight from the Doctor's notes and his mouth. So am I a cancer patient  then or not? Lynne said that it's in remission. I thought that Dr. Khouri said all the cancer cells are gone, so maybe I'm a transplant patient. She said that the better word was cancer survivor. That works for me.

Nevertheless I am irreversibly changed forever. It has been the focus of this blog for a year and a half. It is the thought on every body's mind when they ask about me. So what I am challenged to do now is wrestle with what that means to me. That should keep going for a few years and  thankfully, those I do have.

Can I Interest You In A Fireplace Extraordinaire

When we built our house we decided we wanted a fireplace, especially Lynne. She loves a cozy fire. So it was decided. She did not care much about what kind as long as it burned wood and created a warm spot when it was cold outside. My thoughts went more to the idea that it should heat the house as well. Most open fireplaces suck as much heat  out of the house as  they create and then with the open flue when the fire is out they actually create a colder house even though it may be warm in front of the fire. So we shopped around  and we looked and scouted the Internet and even visited fireplace stores up in Mich. We finally settled on a fireplace, called the Extraordinaire, that was EPA certified clean burning and we found it in Conroe. It will heat up to 2,400 sq. ft. and give all the ambiance we need. With the benefit of a ceramic honeycomb catalytic burner, almost all the gases and smoke and particulates are burned and turned to heat. And on top of that we installed it ourselves. So here's the deal. Before my cancer when ever we had folks over they were on the receiving end of my spiel about the stove's magnificent characteristics. It pulls in outside fresh air for the firebox. It pulls in fresh air to be heated and  blows that warmed air into the house, the warm air then creating a positive pressure in the house. There are no cold drafts anywhere. The whole house gets heated except for an upstairs bed room, and that's good. You can open the glass doors for an open fire. You can close them and control the burn rate, and watch the fire through the glass doors while the fan disperses the heat into the room. We have not run the gas furnace this entire winter.We get plenty of wood by scrounging and taking down trees for customers What's not to love? Alas! It's a small disinterested audience. I'm a zealot without an assembly, that's what I am. Maybe a salesman for Travis Industries, the manufacturer would work? Naw I'll just go ahead and continue to bore our guests. Wait, did I just bore you?

Slower Than A Roach

The process of aging is an interesting one. One of the things that has been happening is my ability to keep up. I'm getting slower. Sometimes I don't realize that I am getting slower, but there are reality checks. I had one of those this morning. There was this roach,  (we do grow 'em big here), in the kitchen. There was a time I could catch them, quicker that a flash, like a fly in the air with my hand. This one escaped my swipe with a towel and he went to the floor and he out ran me from there in the open stretch. Chalk up another first. I'm slower than a roach.

Poignant - And To The Point

Prayers go up from the hearts and minds and voices of so many for the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing. There are so many questions, and the highest on the Richter scale of all this insanity would have to be "Why?. Why in the world would anyone do this. A reporter that was doing a live  update summed it up well when he was referring to the incident, said "this shitty- sorry city -------". He was not denigrating Boston but rather what happened there. Slips of the tongue are poignant.