August, 2020
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wakanda forever
I woke up early Saturday morning. Lucy had had surgery the day before and we’d all curled up and fallen asleep at our usual time (aka, early). I picked up my phone and scrolled Instagram (as I do). At first I was confused … why were there so many Black Panther posts?
And then it all began to make sense. I scrolled faster, I searched. I read bits and pieces, achingly sad snippets from person after person. I finally read the post on Chadwick Boseman’s page. I can’t explain how it made me feel.
At first, I hoped that maybe, it wasn’t true. Maybe I wasn’t understanding it properly. How had I not known he was sick? Maybe we’d all just collectively learned about his cancer. He couldn’t possibly be … dead.
And then, after reading the truth, my whole body began to shake, tears streaming down my face, my breathing shallow and uneven. This man, this king, this enigma had died of colon cancer. And he was barely older than me.
Colon cancer. The beast that took my mother, my grandfather. It terrified me.
Looking back at recent photos of Chadwick, I could see the cancer in his face — that tired, drawn look of someone smiling through pain. The look that haunted my mother’s face for more time than we all acknowledged. The grayness, the dull skin, the too-large eyes against hollowing cheeks, a stark jawline.
He hid it well. Some sick people really do. He focused on the things that mattered to him, the things he wanted to accomplish, and promote. He believed he would beat cancer. He didn’t distract the world with his illness and take away from the spendor of what he did, what he accomplished as an actor and an artist. He let his work speak, his thoughtful responses to questions. His actions, both public and private.
And we all mourn him, and marvel at what he was able to do, while battling silently.
My heart breaks over and over again. Every day, every time I think through the choices he made in the face of devastating odds. He was so much more than an actor. He was the embodiment of a king, a legend. A soul meant to teach us and guide us. A soul taken far too soon.
I think about my own health battles ~ the war I wage every day against an unbeatable foe. And I find inspiration in his example; in his relentless pursuit of his dreams.
Wakanda Forever.
xox, g
and now
This morning, as I watered my meager garden, the breeze rustled the leaves and it was cool. Refreshing.
Yesterday was brutal. And my (occasionally reliable) weather app tells me there is more of that to come tomorrow. Today is the respite.
This year has been … intense. It’s hard to wrap my brain around the fact that I began it in Tokyo with my brother, my cousins, my husband. Waking up on a mattress on the floor, shivering in the cold. Now, I’ve been home — uninterrupted — for nearly eight months. I have grown a garden, I have made pasta and bread. I began working for the first time in over three years. Husband and I survived unemployment, battles with health insurance, tricky diseases and family. We lost his brother. We gained knowledge and understanding of our world and our country that we had never known before. We have been uncomfortable, unsure. Angry. Sad. Disappointed. Afraid.
I’ve spent time this year contemplating the idea of perspective and truth. How we each come to where we currently are — what we currently believe. How people I love, have loved, can say and believe the things they do. How I reconcile that within myself. How I’ve often – of late- been willing to walk away.
My experiences, my education — my life thus far has shaped how I feel I fit into the world. There are things I cannot change. There are things I can and I must. I must be willing to be supremely uncomfortable, and I must be wise enough to be quiet. Those things are difficult. Sometimes, nearly impossible. I was raised to have and to use my voice. Deferring to others is a challenge. But sometimes — and this is so important — it is the right thing to do.
I have been forever changed this year. Like all years. Just more starkly, more abruptly. There is nothing subtle about 2020. There is no “going back.” And for anyone who longs for that, who wishes to return to a “simpler” time — a time before COVID-19, a time before the most recent civil rights movement — you are part of what holds us all back.
We cannot go back. Not to a time when women had no rights, no voice. Not to a time before COVID changed our very existence: how we live, how we travel, how we function in the world. Not to a time when white dominated and erased and marginalized all other colors. Time does not go back. To strive to rewind diminishes all that people have worked for toward equality, toward humanity, toward making America’s ideals a reality for all Americans.
I listen to news reports of the RNC and I wonder how people believe him, how my fellow Americans support his lies, his manipulation, his slow movement toward dictatorship and erasure of all humans who do not agree with him. I can’t make sense of it other than these people, their lives and their education and their values somehow align with him. And while I cannot understand it, I must acknowledge that we are not all equal, and we do not all believe and put value into the same things. And while that feels very frightening right now, it is also what makes this America.
letting go
Last week was a tough week.
It began with my phone completely failing and then the replacement phone that Apple sent me (so kindly ~ the full cost equalling a pending charge on my credit card) *also* not working.
Then we moved into a hurricane. No big thing. Just eight hours (give or take) without power and many, many road closures and floods.
Following that brilliant beginning, I was lucky enough to enjoy my very first colonoscopy (preceded, obviously, by the truly wonderful prep I had heard so much about).
We had some fun challenges along the way (my mammogram, meant to happen on Monday, being rescheduled for the second time because, really, no one stresses about lumps in their breasts, amiright?!? Then nearly being late for the colonoscopy and endoscopy because a major road was closed and no phone lines were working at 6:30am; I mean, I’d sign up for another round of prep, wouldn’t you?). In the end the mammogram happened (albeit this week), we got power back and I survived the most evil night of gatorade drinking known to man. Barely. (But barely counts). Additionally, after about eight hours on the phone with Apple and Verizon it was discovered that we were sent an AT&T phone … so, while painful and time-consuming in ways that cannot adequately be articulated, in the end my phone was fixed as well. Woof.
I often have moments of such utter and extreme fatigue that the only logical way to cope is to cry. Everything hurts; my head, my body, my eyes. Everything. Last week brought me to my knees so many times, I lost count. And it was just life — not MS. Which, y’know, likes to jump on bandwagons and make things better. (Ha). On Thursday morning I was so delirious from lack of sleep my whole body was shaking uncontrollably. I just could not get warm. It took me until Sunday night to start to feel like a human being again. Even after meds on Friday morning.
It’s very easy to give into the frustration, the anger. Trust me, I had some moments. (Like when Verizon’s chat just stopped responding …). I tried to remind myself that being angry wasn’t actually helping a single situation. I could be mad about drinking spiked gatorade on an emply stomach, nearly vomitting many times and being unable to sleep or lie down for more than 20 minutes at a time. But in the end, I had to do it. I knew that it was the smart decision (my family history of colon cancer = not good. At all). I also knew that no amount of anger would change the phone situation. I just had to keep working the problem until a solution was found. And eventually … it was. Power outtages and extreme weather are always jolting (especially if you have a high strung dog who freaks out ABOUT EVERYTHING).
It’s an exercise to let go. It’s a practice. It’s something I just keep trying, over and over and over again. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I just thank God I’m somehow still alive despite everything.
The bad weeks will keep coming. The good weeks will keep coming. If I’m lucky and if I give a little effort, I’ll be able to take a deep breath and step back and recognize everything for what it is. But it will never get to be easy. I think it will always be a conscious effort to take the emotion out and understand what I’m wading through. Cuz when it feels like shit, and it smells like shit, it’s hard to think it isn’t, in fact, shit.
xox, g
D5 Creation