Encouragement

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(I'm writing this on the one year anniversary of finding out I had cancer...)

We've learned a lot through this last year dealing with cancer, treatment, recovery and the like - and it's phenomenal the kinds of things you do learn when you find you've been to the edge and back.

One of the things I learned, honestly, that life is truly not about the destination, it's about the journey.

The destination for all our bodies, is likely a pine box somewhere. That doesn't have to mean that has to be our soul's destination. Sometimes, when we just spend our time existing, drifting, our soul just shrivels up, and dries up and is blown away like dust. That's not what life is about. Life is about living - and the life that comes from just LIVING (all capitals on purpose) as opposed to just existing - is the difference between black and white.

We've found that life now (after cancer) tends to be higher contrast (speaking of black and white) - the highs higher, the lows, lower - and while those lows are definitely lower - the highs more than make up for it.

I found that life, as most people my age tend to think, is not infinite, and that weekends, while occasionally made for Michelob, might be better spent if you realized there weren't an infinite supply of them... So walks in the park (or wherever) have replaced being half comatose in front of the boob tube. Trips to visit friends have replaced sitting idly at home whiling away another weekend - and - that brings up something that happened just a few weekends ago.

We went down to Portland (Oregon) to do a couple of things:

1) Celebrate the end of treatment/major phase of recovery and the beginning of going back to work,

2) visit our daughter, and

3) visit with some of our bestest friends.

While Cindy drove the car down so we'd have a way to get back on time, our son Michael and I took the train, and I'd learned that if you pay a little extra, you sit in what they call "business class" - and the seats are wider, two seats, then an aisle, then one seat, and you get discount coupons on the food in the dining car. So - with my legs being the way they are (right one ‘modified’ from surgery, left one dealing with a DVT (blood clot), we went for the business class. I was expecting we'd get the seats on the right side of the train - where you can see Puget Sound as you go by - and the rows are only one seat wide, and the seats were facing each other, which made conversation and stretching your legs out easy. However, when I asked, those seats were full and we got put into "Row 6".

On the other side of the train.

So we sat there for a bit - and with all the benefits advertised of being on a train, it wasn't much different than sitting in an airplane - Michael reading his book, me sitting there, kind of cramped (these support hose I have to wear for the swelling and DVT tend to want to keep the legs straight) - and right about then, there was an announcement that the "Bistro car" (apparently what's replaced the "Dining Car") was open. I figured that since it was dinner time, and we had those coupons for the food, we should get up there before the line got too long, and so we did, standing there, swaying back and forth as the train trundled down the tracks (ooh, there's a bit of alliteration for you : )

We got our food... Michael a hot dog, me a chili (which I spilled later, but that's another story), and sat down at this little table, and talked, and ate, and read, and laughed, and watched the scenery, and played a game, and in general were having a good time.

That’s when the girls showed up.

A 12 year old and a 14 year old - they'd just met on the train themselves, were bored, and ended up sitting across the aisle from us, and started to try to make up a game. Michael and I were playing our own game by that point, and after I stomped Michael once, and he stomped me once, even worse, he felt he'd had enough, and I said, "Hey, why don't you go over there and teach them how to play"

"Oh, I can't do that..."

"Sure you can, what have you got to lose?"

"If you don't go over there, it's as good as them having said no, and you'll have learned nothing."

"If you do go over there and embarrass yourself, chances are you'll never see them again, so you're not risking much."

"However, if you do go over there, and it works, then you'll have the next hour and a half to spend time laughing, having fun, and making memories."

"So really, what do you have to lose?"

After a few minutes of pondering, he went over there. Big, hulking Michael, went over and in his suave, sophisticated way asked, "Hey, wanna learn how to play a game?"

The girls loved it.

Oh, gosh, did they love it.

And, come to think of it, I think Michael did, too.

One of them got a deck of cards, and while the 14 year old was playing, learning and laughing with Michael, the 12 year old taught me a card game called "Spit" - involving faster reflexes than adults can possibly have (and that children playing games against said adults should be allowed to have). She blew me away. Then she decided to go easy on me and asked if I knew how to play "War" (each of you gets half the deck, and you each put a card down, whoever's card is highest, they win both cards. The winner is the one with all the cards. I thought I'd shuffled the deck well. Turns out I couldn't have shuffled it much better (for her), because by the end of the first hand, she had all but two of my cards. The sound of her laughter was like the joyful ringing of a bell, and told me that even though I was losing the card game (Losing doesn't come close - annihilated is more in the neighborhood), I was winning something much larger. I realized that if I had to 'lose' a game in order to bring that much laughter and joy into a child's life, then I'd happily lose the game,

Every time.

It was at that moment that I realized that the high pitched laugh of hers had a bass line - and I looked across the aisle to find that Michael had his opponent on the ropes, so to speak, and was laughing uproariously at his position in the game.
I thought about this at the time - about how before all these realizations, before cancer, I might have just stayed there in my assigned seat because it had cost me $12.00 extra a seat to get those extra wide/comfortable ones - and by God, I was going to sit there and get my $12.00 worth of enjoyment out of them if it killed me.

But I didn't.

I realized that for us to enjoy the journey the way we had, we had to get up out of our comfortable seats where they were showing a movie, and go up to that Bistro car, where there were no reservations for us, no assigned seats. It was a risk, a small one, but the rewards were so well worth it. Getting up, and daring to get out of our comfort zones and living life, instead of life living us, was obviously the thing to do.

Suddenly, the call came out "Next stop, Vancouver". One of the girls got off, and then 10 minutes later, we got to Portland - and the other little girl just disappeared into the river of people pouring out of the train. We joined the same river and spilled out onto the platform.

We stopped, the crowd thinned, we looked around, and at each other, and realized we were at our destination.

Having truly enjoyed the journey.

Copyright 2005 Tom Roush (unpublished)

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