Feburary 2008

"My right side sill hurts." It was the third day.

"You need to go to the ER" She said.

"No I'll be o.k."

"No tonight"

We joke about her just wanting me to get a cather like she had to when I made her go to the ER. Late that evening, as she stands beside the gurney, the doctor, with a grim look, states:

"There is a problem, you have cancer on your kidney. It's got to come out I called the best urologist I know. You need to come back for a cat scan tomorrow morning."

He is concerned, we have worked together for almost four years in this ER. I am usually standing next to him talking to the person on the gurney. As he talks I think this is not what she sign up for. I hear him but, my mind is thinking of my kids, mother, and her. I know she will soon be gone, but not before she does the right thing.

We go home, but do not talk.

Day two:

"I just checked the cat scan. It is deffinently cancer. I'm going to see if the urologist wants to operated now so you may not be going home."

Another ER Doctor I had spent four years working with. He is almost in tears as he turns to make the call. Befoe I leave the ER I have appointments for the next day that would usually take months to get.

Day Three:

"I have studied the scans, we need to opeate. There is no biopsie we know what this is. It has to come out, probably all of your left kidney."

"I have no insurance."

"Pay me $30 a month if you want to. I don't care if you don't have insurance we opeate I'm not going to let you just die, the room is reserved."

We go home, we don't talk.

June, she stood beside the gurney as they put the epidural in to help put me under.

"If they find anything more tell them I don't want to wake up."

I wake, after a week in the hospital we go home, we do not talk.

September she was gone along with my kidney, but I was alive.

Every six months for three years I must experiance the same tests to make sure there was no recurrence.

Then once a year, the last one being today.

Each time I leave the Doctor's office to sit in the parking lot alone crying.

The relieve is absolutely overwhelming and surprising. I have not thought about it, yet on the rear burner it sits. Cooking slowly, causing me to be short, distant, angry, short tempered, and scared as the test time come closer. Every word uttered by the radiologist suggests it's back. Every word not said by the doctor is a death notice. Then he finally states "You have no recurrence, everything looks good, see you next year." I am given a benediction such as no priest or pastor has ever offed me.

Each time I am thankful of how long my life has been, yet how soon it can end; far to soon.

I compose myself to call those who want to know the results of the tests as soon as possible. With each call I hear relief, which again renews mine.

Then it is on to experianceing each special day until it is time to take the tests again.

Trip One

This is a journal, in part, is of two trips taken to England in the mists of personal disillusionment. The two trips presented their own themes, seemingly of their own accord. This may sound metaphysical, which it is to some extent. There was no preconceived believe that these trips would produce the inner result they did. I offer these writings to you only because many who have read them indicated that they to experienced some inner change.

For myself I look forward to as many more trips as possible, knowing that each, if left to its own devices, may produce the same effect. On my third trip I expect to ride 700 miles on a "push bike" allowing what come to come. The fourth trip will consist of a ride from "End to End," Lands End in Cornwall to John O’Goats in Scotland a journey of 980 miles. But, back to the first two trips...
I began dreaming about traveling to England so long ago I can not even date it. I think it entered my head when my Aunt Dot and Uncle Ken came back from a trip there with tails of relatives with read hair who were my grandfather’s brother’s children. The romance of a whole new family still in the land where my grandparents had migrated from was the seed. I remember my uncle talking about visiting with family, and a trip to the Pub that his father use to drink in. That Pub became the soil for the dream to grow in. Germinating in the sprinkle of day dreams about what it would be like to repeat the visit to family, and Pub where my grandfather once spent time. It was then further fertilized when two cousins from England came to visit my grandparents. I was mesmerized as they talked, the pictures their words painted in my head caused the dream to take firm root.
The dream was expanded after my fathers death with the addition of riding a bicycle through the English county side. Hopefully visiting the WW II air field he flew out, along with a mythical Pub he visited. Day dreams of being able to talk to an ancient bar keep who would relate tails of the young flier from so long ago. The bike riding seed came from a picture I saw somewhere with him standing next to, or riding a bike in England. At some point came the realization that this was attempt to connect to three men, along with a family I knew very little about. Due to events during my childhood this side of the family was peripherally known. A part of my heritage had peeked out at me from behind a door beckoning me to come see what was inside.

Yet, time moved on, life happened, careers, marriage, children, moves, college, so many things that cause a dream to slip in priority. It hovered in the twilight of my mind resurfacing from time to time, shaping a schema of what the trip would look like. Still more life events divorce, new relationships, grandchildren, and deaths intervened sending the dream back to is hibernation time and time again.

After the divorce I had spent a great deal of time digging out who was buried under the pile of what people wanted me to be. Non productive behaviors, that had kept me locked in shame and self doubt, were weeded out of my repertoire. Self trust took root as the weeds of mistrust were pulled out. The landscape of self flourished causing the dream of traveling to England to come closer to reality. However, reality has a way of slapping you around from time to time. Four things happened that caused the dream to be buried deeper then ever before.

The first was an accident, followed by two disastrous relationships, the Cancer came in for the knock out. These everts caused the destruction of my professional and person self leaving an inability to function as I had. Self esteem, along with self confidents gone, self doubt along with it’s friend shame grew back stronger then ever. The weed of mistrust strangled the tender sapling of self trust. Darkness and storms flooded my life seeming destroying the garden, ending my life was truly an answer to the psychic pain and self loathing I lived in.
There was no happiness only fear and dispar grew where hope had once flourished. The Dark Ages could not have been any more horrific than this, what more? More came in the shape of a murder. The senceless murder of woman who had been part of my life for over twenty years. The relationship I had with her was, in my head, never to be had again. It would take far to much time to cultivate, time which was no long available. My spirit seemed to have been taken away allowing for a darkness to settle over the garden, which blotted out God. Yet, the dream of England began dancing in my head like sugarplum’s, what ever sugarplum’s are. It again peeked out, crooked a finger beckoning to come before it was to late. I heeded the call...
On May 19, 2006 I purchased an airline ticket that would change my life. These are almost daily emails sent back to the U.S. about a trip which turned out to be an adventure beyond anything dreamed up over the years. They are mostly as I sent them to family and friends as I traveled. I had no planned itinerary which needed to be followed; thus, there was no rushing about. I traveled to new vistas when I was moved to do so. New people crossed my path enriching my life. I did, however, have in the back of my mind the above seeds planted so long ago. Visiting unknown family, a WW II air field, then visiting sites having to do with time King Arthur.
Finding sites from the 4th and 5th centuries, or even earlier, is not difficult in England. Coming in touch with such ancient sites at first is overwhelming, and mind boggling. To touch a building that is still in use after existing for more than one thousand years tends to put you in your place very quickly. It is often said that looking up at the star filled heavens can give one the feeling of being insignificant in the scheme of things, but the buildings there, for me, have the same ability. Only more so since you can walk in them, touch them, see the worn stone entrance steps which seem to say "You are not the first nor the last. I will be here long after you have turned to dust." Kind of puts things in perspective!