CANCER: A LOVE STORY
I changed the name of this blog for two reasons. First "A Chat With Gary" was the name my ever-generous friend Javier Cortes gave it just to set it up for me; it was not intended for any other reason. Secondly, this blog was originally conceived to support me in remaining in communication with my friends, especially those in distant locations, without having to repeat the details of my medical progress. It continues to serve that function.
However, it has also come to serve a more important function, at least for me. It has become a vehicle in which I can express my reflections upon the experience of this critical process which engages so much of my being during this period of my life. What I consider to be the third, and therefore final, third of my life.
This "final third" began when I was fifty-six on New Year's Day, 2001, during a celebratory gathering I hosted in my house in Brookline. I had invited my friends to declare what they wanted for the coming year. I announced that after much deliberation I was going to close my private psychotherapy practice of twenty-five years, rent my two houses, and embark upon a "spiritual journey". Unlike a sabbatical, this journey would have no desk or date of return. I began the journey at the suggestion and in the company of my friend, Jeff Hull, when we travelled on a Spirit Journey's pilgrimage to the sacred sites of Peru. The theme of the pilgrimage was cleansing or letting go.
When we returned we spent the summer at Jeff's extraordinary riverside house in the Catskill mountains doing very little and enjoying my first free summer since I got my paper route at age eleven. Then in late September, in Santa Fe, as I was engaged in co-leading The Gathering, a community retreat, with Jeff and my long-time friend, Judy Fox, I had a heart attack. It was complicated and dramatic since I had to be moved to Albuquerque for the actually surgery. While there and heavily sedated an ultrasound technician showed me my diseased and badly cyst-encrusted kidneys the result of a degenerative kidney disease called Polysistus Kidney Disease. Since it is most often genetic I assume that he assumed I was aware of it. I wasn't. I'm a mutant. No one in my family has ever had PKD. Currently I am in the final stage of kidney functioning - wherein I intend to remain for some time yet. (I did say final third of my life!)
The point is that I entered the hospital in Santa Fe with the identity of a very active, youthful fifty-six year old who had never had any health concern beyond a common flu and I returned home with an entirely different identity. And I didn't know it. I had no idea that the nature of my spiritual journey would revolve around engaging with my mortality and what it meant to be truly alive and awake. Or that it would mean confronting my addictive, comfort-seeking thoughts and behaviors for the sole purpose of seeing who I am without them. Or that it would be an opportunity to learn to really let go and be still. And to see what wants to emerge from the depths of my being.
Before I croak.
I changed the name of this blog for two reasons. First "A Chat With Gary" was the name my ever-generous friend Javier Cortes gave it just to set it up for me; it was not intended for any other reason. Secondly, this blog was originally conceived to support me in remaining in communication with my friends, especially those in distant locations, without having to repeat the details of my medical progress. It continues to serve that function.
However, it has also come to serve a more important function, at least for me. It has become a vehicle in which I can express my reflections upon the experience of this critical process which engages so much of my being during this period of my life. What I consider to be the third, and therefore final, third of my life.
This "final third" began when I was fifty-six on New Year's Day, 2001, during a celebratory gathering I hosted in my house in Brookline. I had invited my friends to declare what they wanted for the coming year. I announced that after much deliberation I was going to close my private psychotherapy practice of twenty-five years, rent my two houses, and embark upon a "spiritual journey". Unlike a sabbatical, this journey would have no desk or date of return. I began the journey at the suggestion and in the company of my friend, Jeff Hull, when we travelled on a Spirit Journey's pilgrimage to the sacred sites of Peru. The theme of the pilgrimage was cleansing or letting go.
When we returned we spent the summer at Jeff's extraordinary riverside house in the Catskill mountains doing very little and enjoying my first free summer since I got my paper route at age eleven. Then in late September, in Santa Fe, as I was engaged in co-leading The Gathering, a community retreat, with Jeff and my long-time friend, Judy Fox, I had a heart attack. It was complicated and dramatic since I had to be moved to Albuquerque for the actually surgery. While there and heavily sedated an ultrasound technician showed me my diseased and badly cyst-encrusted kidneys the result of a degenerative kidney disease called Polysistus Kidney Disease. Since it is most often genetic I assume that he assumed I was aware of it. I wasn't. I'm a mutant. No one in my family has ever had PKD. Currently I am in the final stage of kidney functioning - wherein I intend to remain for some time yet. (I did say final third of my life!)
The point is that I entered the hospital in Santa Fe with the identity of a very active, youthful fifty-six year old who had never had any health concern beyond a common flu and I returned home with an entirely different identity. And I didn't know it. I had no idea that the nature of my spiritual journey would revolve around engaging with my mortality and what it meant to be truly alive and awake. Or that it would mean confronting my addictive, comfort-seeking thoughts and behaviors for the sole purpose of seeing who I am without them. Or that it would be an opportunity to learn to really let go and be still. And to see what wants to emerge from the depths of my being.
Before I croak.
1 comment:
Wow! This is pretty profound stuff, Gary. I'm enjoying the read . . . and your insights. Bravo to you for putting a challenging situation to good use while you find it's lighter side(leave it to you!)
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