The bull and the shit

A couple nights ago I went cyber with my pain over my dad and finally started searching the net for info on esophageal cancer. I joined a chat group and found the following links:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/esophageal-cancer/

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/esophageal-cancer/DS00500/

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/esophageal/

http://www.cancerfightingstrategies.com/index.html

http://www.breathing.com/tests.htm

http://www.cancer-connection.org/links.shtml

http://www.ecaware.org/

http://www.eccafe.org/

http://esophagealcancer.org/

http://www.thecancerblog.com/category/esophageal-cancer/

http://groups.msn.com/EsophgealCancerChatandSupport

But now I'm thinking those links are bullshit. Not that I'm a believer in rolling over and dying, not really. I'm simply looking at reality. The cancer that my dad's got is BAD. Recovery's not too promising. But that doesn't mean I'm planning funerals. I'm trying to believe in the laws of nature. . .

This winter felt like it would never fucking end, at least here in Iowa. I remember about a month ago seeing a commercial for the Masters, those luscious green fairways of Augusta taunting me in my misery of dirty snow and below zero temps. But no matter how miserable I was, I knew without a doubt, without question that spring would come. It just would, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning. While this particular winter season felt longer and harder than recent ones, I knew it would pass, and it did.

And the leaves? As I listened to a friend coach me through a freakout today, I looked out at the trees and their tiny buds beginning to create that promising soft fuzz. I KNOW that the leaves themselves will come, and that they will mature throughout the spring and summer. And come fall? They'll change color, and they'll dry out, and they'll blow from their tree homes, and they'll fall to the browning grass beneath, and they'll crunch under feet, and they'll breakdown into little pieces, and they'll get soggy and melt into the Earth.

None of this is questionable. It's such a common, regular occurrence that it's practically unseen, seldom pondered, at least by me. And yet now that I'm looking at my father's mortality, I find myself searching for acceptance in such cycles. I understand on an intellectual plane that what my father's going through is simply the cycle of human life. We're born, we grow, we die. But I'm incapable of looking at this with the same faith and trust with which I know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. I can't.

I'm scared to death of what's coming. I don't know what it is. I don't know the form it will take or the demands it will make. The one person who I would most love to talk to about this died last year. She was sick, and I couldn't handle the fear of losing her, so I simply drifted backwards to a safe distance, putting in an appearance now and then, but ultimately letting others love her through her last years, months, and days. I don't want to abandon my dad that way.